rs^ 



S7 



LITTLE PEOPLE 




IN THE MEADOW. 



Frontispiece. 



••*.' 






7 



Little People 



AND THEIR HOMES IN MEADOWS, WOODS 
AND WATERS 



$ 



/ 



STELLA LOUISE HOOK 




Illustrated by Dan Beard and Harry Beard 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S 
1888 




4 "7 tr* 
7 /o 



Copyright, 1888, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 




TROWS 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 

NEW YORK. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER l.—THE FLOWER FAIRIES. 

PAGE 

The Fairyland around Us — The Butterflies in the Pasture — 
Their Transformations — Hawk-moths — True Moths and 
their Habits i 

CHAPTER II.— THE MUSICAL ELVES. 

The Katydid — Crickets — Grasshoppers — Walking-sticks — 

The Praying Mantis — The Cockroach — The Earwig . 31 

CHAPTER III.— LITTLE PEOPLE IN ARMOR. 

The Lady-bird and its Appetite for Aphides — Tiger-beetles 
— The Bombardier-beetle — Water-beetles — Scavenger- 
beetles — Grave-diggers — " Tumble-bugs " — Plant-eating 
Beetles — Snap-beetles — Fireflies — The Melons Strange 
History — Weevils 57 

CHAPTER IV.— THE WATER-SPRITES. 

A Swamp — Life of the Dragon-fly — The Ephemera — The 

Caddice and its Case — The Ant-lion — Termites . SS 



vi Contents. 



CHAPTER V.— THE TROUBLESOME MIDGETS. 

PAGE 

The House-fly — Gadfly — Horse-fly — Gnats and Mosquitoes 

and their Life in the Water 113 



CHAPTER VI. —THE WISEST OF THE LITTLE 
PEOPLE. 

Gall-wasps and Oak-balls — The Mud-wasp and her House 
— The Digger-wasp — The Ichneumon-wasp — Paper-mak- 
ing Wasps — Bees — The Leaf-cutter Bee — The Bumble- 
bee — Bees and Flowers — The Story of Apis Town — The 
Ant's Story ......... 130 

CHAPTER VII.—THE FAIRIES' PETS AND THEIR 
RELATIONS. 

The " Ants' Cows " — Tree-hoppers — Scale Insects — Cochin- 
eal — Lac Insect — The Cicada 183 

CHAPTER VIII.— THE BROWNIES. 

The Spider in her Tent — How the Web is Spun — Ground- 
spiders— -The Highway Robber — The Water-spider . 203 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



In the Meadow. Antiopa Butterfly and Chrysalis, with the 
Thorny Caterpillar, below ; Striped Asterias Caterpillar, 
Chrysalis, and Butterfly ; Archippus Butterfly above. 

Frontispiece. 



PAGE 



Luna Moths flying in the Moonlight i 

The Fairies that Have Gone 30 

Migratory Grasshoppers. 1. Trimerotropis Vinculata. 2. Fe- 
male of same. 3. Melanoplus Devastator. 4. Comnula 
Astrox 31 

The Crickets' Concert. 1. Field Crickets. 2. Carolina 

Grasshopper. 3. Katydid 44 

Musical Elves. 1. Mantis. 2 and 3. Climbing- or Tree- 
crickets. 4. Western Cricket. 5. Mole-crickets. 6. 
Katydid laying Eggs. 7. Walking-stick 56 

Lady-bird (Coccinella) and Larva devouring Aphides. The 
Caterpillar-hunter (Calosoma) and its Prey. " Tumble- 
bug " (Copris) rolling a Ball 57 

The Wonderful Snap-beetle (Elater Occulatus). Large 
Weevil on a Pin. Wheat Weevil (magnified). Lightning- 
beetle (Elater Noctilucus) of the Tropics 78 



viii List of Illustrations. 



PAGE 



Burying-beetles (Necrophorus) surrounding a Dead Mouse. 
Bombardier - beetle (Brachinus). Capricorn - beetle. 
" Whirligigs " (Gyrinus) 87 

Day-flies (Ephemera) circling round a Lamp 88 

The Home of the Water-sprites. 1. Stone-fly (Perla). 2. 
Young Ant-lion (Myrmeleon). 3. Full-grown Ant-lion. 
4. Dragon-fly (Libellula). 5. King Termes. 6. Cad- 
dice. 7. Horned Corydalis 92 

Young Dragon-flies ? and Caddices in their Cases, beneath 

the Water 112 

A. Proboscis of Fly. B. Proboscis of Mosquito. C. Larva of 

Mosquito, (All highly magnified.) 113 

The Midgets' Victim 126 

1. House-fly. 2. Head of Fly. 3. Fly's Foot. 4. Section 

of Fly's Eye (greatly magnified) 129 

Paper-wasps' Nest 130 

The Digger-wasp (Sphex). A. Digger-wasp backing out of 
Hole with Piece of Earth. B. Dragging Grasshopper 
to the Hole. C. Pulling in the Victim. D. Covering it 
with Earth. E. Using her Head to Pack the Earth into 
the Hole 136 

1. Worker-bee. 2. Drone. 3. Queen. 4. Ants' Nest, show- 
ing the Halls and Rooms within. 5. Gall or Oak-apple. 
6. Nest of the Leaf-cutter Bee. A. Larva of Gall-wasp 
(Cynips). B. Full-grown Gall-wasp. C. Interior of 
Gall 182 



List of Illustrations. ix 



PAGE 



Aphides on a Rose 183 

The Little Naturalist. Cicada. Cicada Shell on a Tree. 
Insect emerging from Shell. Larva Underground upon 

a Root 198 

"Skater" on the Water 202 

Tarantula 203 

The Water-spider at Home 216 

Tarantula's Nest, and Spider-webs 228 



CHAPTER I. 



THE FLOIVER-FAIRIES. 




HERE have 
the fairies 
gone ? Long 
ago, you 
know, there 
were plenty 
of them to 
>e found by the 
fortunate, hiding 
in the moss, or 
peeping out of 
flower-cups ; or, put- 
ting on invisible caps, 
would play all manner 
of pranks on the mortals that 
might meet them in the forest. Some- 



2 Little People. 

times they would come into farm-houses on winter 
evenings, and dance in the chimney-corner; while in 
summer they preferred their fairy rings, sporting in 
the moonlight, and making the grass inside the circle 
greener than it was anywhere else by their magic. 
They built their elfin homes and lived their elfin lives, 
and happy was the mortal who gained their favor. 

But we do not hear so much about the fairies now. 
Perhaps we have grown too wise, or perhaps, again, we 
have not grown wise enough. Either way, people have 
fallen into a fashion of laughing at fairies ; and no doubt 
that is the very reason they will not let us see them any 
more, for they do not like to be treated so disrespect- 
fully. 

But, after all, have the fairies all gone away ? Do 
we never see them — the Good People of old English 
traditions, the Little People that the Indians believed in ? 
Fairy-land, you know, is a curious place ; it is hard to 
tell just where it begins and where it ends, and people 
may walk right through it without knowing it, if the 
great Fairy Queen does not choose to let them into her 
secrets. Besides, many people refuse to believe in 



The Flower- Fairies. 3 

fairy-land ; and though the queen may bring out one 
wonder after another to spread before their dull eyes, 
they will look at it carelessly, or not look at it at all, 
and say, " Oh, that is nothing ! " 

But if you will set out with a firm faith in fairy-land, 
and a pair of eyes ready to look at anything the queen 
may show you, I am quite sure you will find a great 
many wonderful things before you get home. 

Suppose we take a journey into fairy-land now — it is 
not far away — and see if the Little People are not as 
delightful as they were in the days of Puck and Titania. 
They have a very great queen to rule them, I must tell 
you ; and though she has different names, the simplest, 
and the one you can most easily remember, is Nature. 
And Queen Nature's dominions are so large that no- 
body has ever seen the end of them ; so that, instead of 
its being a hard matter for us to find fairy-land, it is not 
very easy to get out of it, unless we shut ourselves up 
in the very heart of a city. Even there we see signs of 
her power in every crack and crevice, and when we 
know her better, we shall discover that we can never 
quite get away from her and still remain ourselves. 



4 Little People. 

Nor must we forget that in everything she obeys our 
heavenly Father, who made her and gave her all her 
power, and who cares for the tiniest of the Little 
People, and is glad to have us know and love them. 

Now let us go forth into the sunshine, to find the 
fairies. It is a very warm July day, but that is just 
what the flower-fairies like best ; and we shall find 
plenty of them over in the pasture, where the blackber- 
ries bloom, and the butterfly-weed hangs out its clusters 
of bright orange- colored flowers. The common milk- 
weed blossoms look quite dull by the side of their gay 
cousins, and we can see that the flower-fairies like the 
brilliant ones better, for they are fluttering over them 
by the score, on golden wings. 

" Why, these are butterflies ! " 

Oh, yes, that is what we have come to look for. 
And if they are not the most wonderful of the Little 
People, they are the prettiest and gayest, and their life 
passes like a midsummer dream. Just see this large 
one,* that has come on four great orange-colored wings, 
marked with velvety black, to flutter over the flowers, 

* On the right in the frontispiece. 



The Flower- Fairies. 5 

no brighter than itself. It must measure nearly three 
inches across the wings. See it uncoil that long, black 
tongue, looking like a horse-hair, that has been curled 
up and tucked away in a little pocket until now. How 
easily it dips into one flower after another, sipping the 
honey from the red-gold horns, just a little here and 
there. Evidently Archippus is not very hungry to-day. 
Perhaps he has been dining more heartily in the garden 
yonder, and is only taking a dainty little dessert from 
his favorite butterfly-weed. 

As he floats so lightly over the milk- weed plants, I 
wonder if he remembers when he lived there before, 
crawling slowly over their stems, and nibbling their 
thick leaves. Queen Nature has caused a very won- 
derful change in his life and fortunes since that time, 
and yet he does not seem to think much about it as he 
flies through the sunshine. I fear he thinks more of 
sunshine than anything else, but as he flies away we 
will examine the milk-weed, and try to find some of his 
relations. 

Can this slow-moving, striped caterpillar be any kin 
to our bright-winged butterfly in the summer air above ? 



6 Little People. 

Watch him as he crawls clumsily along on his sixteen 
short feet, greedily munching the leaves as he goes, 
with the keen jaws that work sideways, like a pair of 
scissors. How different from the butterfly's airy flight ; 
his long, graceful proboscis, or trunk, through which he 
takes his dainty fare of honey and dew ; his small 
body and brilliant wings ! To be sure, the caterpil- 
lar is rather handsome in his way ; he is round and 
smooth, with lines of black, gold, white, and violet, run- 
ning around his body. Yet his beauty is quite unlike 
that of the butterfly, and I am sure only Queen Nature's 
magic wand could work such a wonderful change as that 
which is to come over him before the summer dies. 

What feeling does young Archippus have, that tells 
him his change is near, his existence as a crawling cater- 
pillar will soon end, and that he must prepare for the 
great event of his life ? That is a secret Queen Nature 
has not told us. We do not know how the caterpillar 
feels, but we can see what he does. 

First he loses his appetite and crawls about languidly, 
then leaves the milk-weed on which he has lived and fed 
ever since he came out of the egg } and seeks a sheltered 



The Flower- Fairies. 7 

spot in which to pass through his strange experience. 
Sometimes he finds a twig or leaf, sometimes a fence- 
rail, and to this he hangs, fastening himself by spinning 
some sticky threads that soon harden into a tuft of silk. 
There he swings, head downward, his poor little feet 
curling up helplessly, and his striped body swaying in 
the wind — hangs there all night, perhaps, without 
change ; but at last he begins to stir. His pretty skin 
cracks right open down the back — but that, indeed, he 
is used to ; for he has lost it several times before, and 
always found that a new one had grown underneath. 
But this time, instead of coming out dressed in a fresh 
new caterpillar-skin, he creeps forth a strange-looking 
green object, without feet, without head, without wings, 
and can only cling feebly to the skin he has just pushed 
off, and which still hangs to the fence-rail. 

What has he to cling with, you ask, if he has neither 
head nor feet? Well, part of his body is formed of 
rings, one within the other, like a travelling cup or a 
tiny telescope, and looking as if they would shut up 
every minute. They do not; but with their overlap- 
ping edges the chrysalis, as he is now called, can catch 



8 Little People. 

the caterpillar-skin, and actually climb to the very top, 
where he hangs himself again to the silken tuft by a 
little hook at the end of his body. Now he swings free, 
side by side with his own old skin ; but the latter does 
not stay there long. The chrysalis squirms about vig- 
orously till he pushes it off, and it drops shrivelled to 
the ground ; and then he quiets down and settles him- 
self for a nap of two weeks. 

Now the fairy queen must take care of him ; for he is 
quite helpless, and so still you would never think him 
to be alive. He is rather a pretty little creature, bright 
green, with shining golden dots here and there ; but as 
time passes the color fades, and through his horny skin 
can be seen faint marks and dots that remind us of a 
butterfly's wings. Yes, Queen Nature is doing her 
part ; and when the two weeks are at an end, the chrys- 
alis skin cracks open, and out crawls a feeble creature, 
with six long black legs, and a long black trunk or pro- 
boscis, a small body, big eyes, slender feelers, and two 
crumpled brownish wings. He doesn't look much like 
the gay butterfly we saw flying over the flowers, but re- 
member what a tiny place he has been shut up in — for 



The Flower- Fairies. 9 

the chrysalis is only an inch long — and his wings have 
been folded so tightly it will take him some time to get 
them wide open, Besides, he is very weak after his 
long imprisonment, and must rest a while, letting the 
warrfi air blow over him and the sun shine upon him, 
giving him strength. And now he moves his damp 
wings, raises them, waves them about. Slowly they 
unfold, slowly stretch larger and larger, till they spread 
out like two orange sails ; and when they are quite dry, 
they carry the happy butterfly away over the sunny 
fields, to revel in the flowers over which he once crawled 
so patiently. Did Cinderella's fairy godmother, when 
she changed the rats into horses, do anything more 
wonderful than the fairy Nature has done in changing 
a caterpillar into a butterfly ? 

Now let us look about the pasture and see how many 
different kinds of butterflies we can find. 

We may see an Ephestion butterfly in the orchard, 
for he is very fond of fruit ; and for this reason is often 
called a fruit-butterfly, which may be an easier name for 
you to remember than his long one. A thievish rogue 
is he. Not satisfied with the dainty sweets to be found 



io Little People. 

in the cups of lilies and honeysuckles, he must go off 
with vagabond wasps and hornets in search of some 
ripe peach or pear on which the skin is broken ; and 
how the winged marauders cluster around such a one, 
drinking the rich juice that the sun has been warming 
for them ! When you see a beautiful black butterfly, 
his hind wings brushed over with blue, and the under 
sides spotted with red, flying through the air, you may 
know him to be the mischievous Ephestion ; who, leav- 
ing his daintier companions to their flower-sipping, is 
off to the nearest fruit-trees to rob them of their full- 
flavored wine. 

But we have not noticed that beautiful creature flut- 
tering about the thistles ; and as she and her sisters are 
related to the butterflies we have been talking about, 
we really must pay them some attention. This one is 
nearly as large as the Archippus, but shaped a little dif- 
ferently ; and while her fore wings are orange, spotted 
with black, her hind wings are blue-black, with two rows 
of creamy dots. Wait till she raises them, and you will 
see that the under sides are covered with silvery spots, 
that glisten in the sunshine. 



The Flower- Fairies. n 

We may always know Idalia and her sisters by these 
shining ornaments, for they are the badge, or mark, of 
the family ; the lovely Aphrodite, with her shaded golden 
wings, spreading as widely as the Idalia's, being the 
one you would notice most readily. But we have not 
time to search for her and her smaller sisters, that we 
would recognize by their black-spotted orange wings, 
and the silvery dots beneath ; so will go a little nearer 
to the thistles, and take a closer look at another butter- 
fly, named Antiopa, who is a distant relation of the 
others. Her family name is Vanessa; and you may 
know them all by their wings, whose edges are not 
smoothly rounded, but are rough and jagged as if they 
were torn. But the Antiopa is very handsome in her 
way, with her rich dark crimson wings, so dark they 
look almost black, while the cream-colored border is 
spotted with light blue. That is she, with outspread 
wings, in the lower part of the frontispiece. Do you 
not remember seeing her in the early spring, before 
the violets had dared lift their heads in the woods, 
flying round and round among the trees in the first 
warm sunshine ? The Antiopa butterflies we see then 



12 Little People. 

are generally very ragged and shabby, though the 
tatters do not show so plainly in their jagged wings 
as they would in some others ; but when we consider 
it is a last year's dress, it is not surprising that it looks 
rather worn out. 

The Antiopas flutter over the last fall flowers ; and 
when the frosty days come, they just creep into some 
little crevice in the barn, or wood-pile, or brush-heap, or 
any sheltered place, and there sleep all through the bit- 
ter cold of our winter days and nights. Then when the 
warmth comes back to earth, and the sun shines very 
brightly from the spring sky, out crawls Antiopa, to 
take a little flight through the trees, and see if their 
brown buds are swelling into blossoms and leaves yet. 

And what are they like in their caterpillar-days ? 
Did you ever see a great company of ugly black cater- 
pillars, all over thorns, and spines, and spikes, like the 
one in the corner of the frontispiece, crawling on the 
trees and fences in some country road, or village street ? 
When you do, look about you sharply, and you will 
find some hanging to the fence-rails with their bodies 
curled up in the shape of a hook, or a letter J ; and if 



The Flower- Fairies. 13 

you remember the strange thing that befel baby Archip- 
pus, you will know what these baby Antiopas are going 
to do. For caterpillars are just baby butterflies ; even 
these ugly creatures, which will grow up into some- 
thing very different from their present shape, I am 
glad to say. Don't be afraid of the black spikes, but 
look at this one that has pushed off his caterpillar- 
skin and swings on the fence, a chrysalis. He has not 
changed so very much in appearance, for the chrysalis, 
like the caterpillar, is ugly and thorny ; but if you take 
it off the rail very gently, and carry it home, by and by 
the beautiful Antiopa butterfly will come out, spread its 
rich wings, and fly away. 

All this time, there have been two handsome butter- 
flies dancing over the field, now hovering about the 
butterfly-weed, now dipping into the thistles. You 
must look at the long tails on their hind wings, for this 
distinguishes the Papilios from all the others we have 
seen to-day, and proves them to be quite a different fam- 
ily. This handsome black one, with the bright yellow 
spots on his velvety wings, is called Asterias, which 
means starry, and the yellow spots do seem a little like 



14 Little People. 

bright stars shining from a midnight sky. He has his 
wife with him, and she is a little larger than he, with a 
good deal of blue in her hind wings, and fewer yellow 
spots ; yet the caterpillars are all just alike. 

When we go back to the garden, we will try to find 
some in the parsley-bed, for the young Asterias lives 
altogether on these feathery green leaves, and his own 
color is so nearly like that of the plant that he is hard 
to find.* You may know him in the picture by the 
spotted black bands that cross his body ; while the 
butterfly is near by, in the corner, and the chrysalis 
above them. Did you notice how much the pale body 
of the Archippus caterpillar was like the whitish-green 
leaves of the milk-weed, and how hard it was to see the 
rough, dark Antiopas against the bark over which they 
crawled ? This is one of Queen Nature's wise plans for 
the safety of the Little People ; who might all be de- 
voured by birds, or captured by naturalists, or killed by 
thoughtless boys, if they could be found very easily. 

But we have spent a long time in the pasture, and 
cannot linger to look for any other Papilios ; though As- 

* See Frontispiece. 



The Flower- Fairies. 15 

terias has a good many brothers, who are all so hand- 
some and strong that they have been called Knights of 
the air. Perhaps we shall find the beautiful yellow Tur- 
nus in the garden, with his trappings of black, and the 
handsome, velvety black Troilus, his hind wings shading 
into green. All these you will learn to know by and 
by, if you watch for them in the sunny summer days. 
But now we must go through the pasture bars, down by 
the elder and swamp-raspberry bushes, till we reach the 
road ; and here in a shady spot, where the showers have 
left a small puddle between the ruts, behold what a 
merry company ! They are fluttering about the muddy 
little pool, their dainty golden wings mingling in a but- 
terfly dance, as we startle them ; and now, if we are very 
quiet, they will all settle down again on the damp earth, 
looking as though somebody had dropped a whole gar- 
land of daffodils there. You must know these little 
butterflies well, for they may be seen in any country 
road, generally in groups ; for they are the most social 
little things in the world, and take no pleasure in long, 
lonely flights, like the Knights and Nymphs of the air. 
The little Philodice finds his enjoyment in the compan- 



1 6 Little People. 

ionship of his kind ; and above all things, delights in a 
roadside puddle. His name means lover of the wayside, 
for he does not care for the dark woods nor the big, 
broad fields, though the butterfly-weed does attract him 
to a pasture sometimes. He loves the country roads 
as they wind along, now in the shade of over-arching 
trees, now in the bright sunshine, and he brightens 
them with the flutter of his yellow wings, like sun- 
beams. We will not disturb the contented little be- 
ings at their innocent revels, but leave them to cluster 
about the wayside inn they have established ; drinking 
each other's health, dancing on golden wings, and form- 
ing such a pretty scene that, as we go on, we wish all 
social merrymakings were as happy and harmless as 
those of the little Philodices. 

But all these creatures of the sunshine are not the 
only flower fairies. There are many more whose soft 
wings, marked with less vivid colors, but often more 
beautiful lines and shadings, appear only after the sun 
has gone down, and the dew is falling. Then their si- 
lent flight begins ; and as we sit in the twilight, and the 
sweet breath of the flowers comes to us through the 



The Flower- Fairies. 17 

dimness, we may hear a whir of wings in the still air, or 
see a mysterious shape flit by, to vanish like a spirit 
amid the shadows. 

They are kin to the butterflies, after all ; and much 
like them in many ways, though few of them can boast 
such brilliant colors. This creature whose long gray 
wings are now humming in the honeysuckles overhead, 
is not likely to attract attention at any time ; yet, if we 
could catch him, I think you would admire the delicate 
tracery on his plain dress, and the five orange-colored 
spots on his sides, which ornaments have given him the 
name of Five-spotted Hawk-moth. 

Now, these hawk-moths are so called, not from any 
fierce or bloodthirsty traits, for they are gentle, harm- 
less creatures as one would wish to see ; but their wings 
are so strong and their flight so swift, that they have 
been likened to hawks. They are a little different from 
other moths that come lazily forth later in the evening, 
and when you are more familiar with them you will 
learn the differences very easily. 

Another name for these moths is that of Sphinx ; 
and they are so called because in their babyhood — the 



1 8 Little People. 

caterpillar state, you remember — they have a way of 
arching the fore part of their long bodies like the neck 
of a proud horse, or like that strange monster of old fa- 
bles, the Sphinx. 

Then have these dim, soft-flitting creatures the same 
life-history as the gay butterflies ? 

Yes, all the flower-fairies pass through the same 
transformations ; and our swift-flying hawk-moth was 
once a thick, green caterpillar, with cream-white slanting 
lines on each side, feeding on a tomato-plant. Did you 
ever see such a caterpillar in the garden ? After spend- 
ing the whole summer in this way, what does the 
Sphinx do but creep into the ground; where, shedding 
his green skin, he becomes a hard, brown chrysalis, and 
lies as in a grave all winter. 

There it sleeps, while the winter storms rage over 
it, and the snows fall on its grave ; but with the warm 
weather comes an awakening stir beneath the soil, the 
brown skin cracks open, and the winged thing comes 
forth to breathe the air once more, fly in the summer 
twilight, and sip the sweets from the honeysuckle's 
graceful vases. 



The Flower- Fairies. 19 

This is the Sphinx's story, which, you see, is a 
good deal like the butterfly's ; and the great night- 
moths that will come along a little later in the evening 
have, we shall find, histories much like the others. For 
all these beautiful flying beings were once ugly, help- 
less, crawling things, just as different from their happier 
full-grown selves as we are from the angels we are go- 
ing to be after we have passed through the transforma- 
tion we call death, and rise to a brighter world and 
purer life above. For we do not die any more than 
the caterpillars die when they pass into the chrysalis 
state, and we ought not to forget this when we have 
the butterflies and moths flying all summer to remind 
us of it. 

If we could only see in the dark, we might find many 
beautiful moths among the flowers in the garden. We 
might see hawk-moths whose hind wings are tinged 
with red or rose color, and others with olive markings. 
But there is one Sphinx that we can easily find some 
day in the full sunlight ; for, though a true hawk-moth, it 
has imitated the butterflies' fashion of flying by day, and 
from the humming of its wings, as it hovers above the 



20 Little People. 

flowers, we call it the humming-bird moth. It is a 
pretty little thing, and its wings, instead of being cov- 
ered thickly with colored scales, like other moths and 
butterflies, are almost transparent, like the wings of a 
bee. 

Perhaps you never examined the delicate scales that 
look like dust when they come off on the fingers that 
would hold the frail w r ing ; but if you were to put these 
dust specks under a microscope, you would find each 
one to be a feather, or scale, of strange and beautiful 
shape. 

And now, as the evening advances, and even the 
western sky is quite dark, the night fairies are all astir. 
Was that a bat whose wings fanned the soft air so near 
us, or one of the great Attacus moths, whose size and 
beauty make them worthy of a high place among their 
kind? The most common of these is the giant Cecropia; 
and the delicate shades of brown, red, and drab, the 
four great spots, and the figured border, are too beauti- 
ful for any words to describe. His brother Polyphemus 
is nearly as handsome ; and though he is named after a 
giant who had but one eye, our Polyphemus has two 



The Flower -Fairies. 21 

bright ones of his own, and an eye-shaped spot on each 
yellow-brown wing besides. The third brother, Prome- 
theus, is smaller, and wears a modest dark-brown suit, 
with a light creamy border, and a spot at the tip of each 
fore-wing ; while his wife dresses in a gayer costume, 
variegated with dull crimson, and bears on each wing 
an eye-shaped spot. 

But the prettiest of them all is their graceful sister 
Luna, named after the moon, in whose light the artist 
has represented her to be flying (see initial), and called 
also " queen of the night." She is wholly clad in deli- 
cate green, her hind wings being prolonged into long 
tails of the same hue. No more beautiful fairy could be 
found ; but Luna moths are not taken very often, and 
he is fortunate who sees the delicate wings reflecting 
the moonlight. 

These slow, thick-bodied moths have learned some- 
thing new. While the butterflies, who stay in their 
chrysalides but a short time, leave them exposed to all 
weathers, and the Sphinx caterpillars burrow in the 
ground to spend the winter, the other moths form a 
strong covering of silk for their chrysalides, and within 



22 Little People. 

this cosy nest, lie without fear of the coldest winter 
storm. Now if you can find some large moth-caterpil- 
lar wandering about on a September day, and carry 
him home in a comfortable, airy box, or basket, you will 
see a curious sight. 

In the first place, the Attacus caterpillars are very 
large and handsome, with red, blue, or gold ornaments 
on the ridges of their ringed bodies, which are gener- 
ally green ; and you will not wonder that they turn 
into large moths. When young Cecropia or Polyphe- 
mus is ready for his winter nap, and has fixed upon a 
place that suits him, he does not suspend himself like 
the butterfly caterpillars, but, holding fast to the support 
he has chosen, begins to spin a little sticky silk from 
his mouth. This is at first like soft gum, but it quickly 
dries into delicate threads like a spider's web ; and our 
caterpillar, fastening one end firmly, draws a long strand 
across his body, fastening it again on the other side. 
Then back goes his head, leaving another long thread ; 
and so on, back and forth, till his body is covered with 
a fine silken network, through which you may still see 
the steady regular movements of the busy creature 



The Flower- Fairies. 23 

within. Fainter and fainter becomes his outline as the 
web grows thicker, until at last only the firm, strong 
cocoon can be seen ; while Cecropia, hidden safely 
within, goes into the chrysalis state at his leisure. This 
cocoon is two or three inches long, and of a brown 
color ; one end is pointed, while the other is round. 
When Cecropia is ready to come out as a moth next 
summer, he will crawl through the pointed end. The 
other members of his family like to build leaves into 
their cocoons, fastening them with the silk, unless you 
have put them into a box where leaves are not to be 
had, and then they will get along very comfortably with- 
out any. 

Now you can understand how the silk-worms of 
China, that are often raised in this country as well, spin 
the glossy threads that are woven into such beautiful 
fabric. The cocoon of the silk-worm is a pretty little 
oval, yellow thing, so close and firm that it is no easy 
matter to pull off the long threads without breaking 
them ; so that in silk factories it is done by machinery. 
Of course, if the moth came out of the cocoon it would 
cut through the silken fibres and leave them short and 



24 Little People. 

useless ; so, to keep the cocoons perfect, they are put in 
an oven for a few hours, when the heat kills the poor 
little silk-worm within, and then the silk can be ravelled 
off at any time. We realize how many of these little 
caterpillars there must be in the world, when we con- 
sider how much silk is made, and how many people are 
occupied in weaving it ; and they are, perhaps, the most 
useful of all insects. 

There are many handsome moths whose silky co- 
coons you may find on leafless trees, or among the fall- 
en leaves ; too many, indeed, for us to examine carefully 
just now. 

There are the funny " woolly bears," as the hairy 
caterpillars are sometimes called, which make coarse 
cocoons with their own hairs, and fasten them in crev- 
ices ; after a while turning into " tiger moths," which 
are more or less gayly decked with bright colors and 
markings, some being arranged so as to look like a har- 
ness across the insect's wings. 

There is the "red under- wing" and his relations, 
that, when at rest, look dull and gray enough ; but wake 
one of them up, and presto ! a flash of crimson as the 



The Flower- Fairies. 25 

wings are lifted, and away goes the moth before you 
have time to recover from your surprise. 

Then there is the Beautiful Deiopeia, as she is al- 
ways called ; a lovely little insect, who seems to know 
her beauty should not be hidden beneath the dark robe 
of night, for she flies all day with the butterflies, chiefly 
in sandy places. Perhaps you have seen her — a little 
moth measuring only an inch across the wings, the 
upper ones being pale yellow and white, covered with 
fine black dots ; the lower ones, rose-color, with a black 
border. 

It seems strange that the moths, who so generally 
fly at night, should be attracted by a light; but you must 
have seen how they come to the windows on a summer 
evening, or into the room. A little moth or "miller," 
as we call it, will fly round and round the flame of a can- 
dle or lamp till its wings are singed, and perhaps it is 
burned to death ; yet it cannot keep away from the brill- 
iant thing that fascinates it so strangely. This is some- 
thing we do not understand ; but as moths do fly to- 
ward a light, we can see and catch plenty of them around 
a lantern on a summer evening. 



26 Little People. 

But there are some of these Little People whose 
lives are less dreamy and poetical than these spangled 
fays of the moonlight, yet their story is a very curious 
one, and well worth repeating. 

Have you never seen a tiny, brown-winged creature, 
no larger than a small fly, flitting through the room ; and 
have you not seen, too, the haste with which the careful 
house-keeper springs up to chase the wee enemy and 
kill it, if possible, exclaiming that " the moths will get 
into the furniture, and have already destroyed a whole 
bundle of woollens " ? 

Now you would hardly think such a tiny, soft little 
thing could be capable of so much mischief as all this ; 
and, indeed, it is not the moth itself that has such a sin- 
gular appetite for woollen cloth. Moths, you remem- 
ber, have only soft tubes for mouths, through which 
they suck liquids, and therefore cannot bite cloth or any- 
thing else; but you must not forget that their babies, 
the caterpillars, eat very differently. 

So the mother clothes-moth, harmless as she is her- 
self, lays her eggs among the folds of any woollen gar- 
ments or blankets that she can find snugly put away 



The Flower- Fairies. 27 

on an undisturbed shelf, and from these eggs hatch the 
tiniest of caterpillars. The life they lead is very differ- 
ent from that of their kindred out in the fresh air, with 
sweet green leaves for dinner every day. Instead, they 
burrow into the dark folds of the cloth, eating their way 
along, and leaving many a hole to tell of their greedi- 
ness. It seems very strange that they should have such 
a liking for dusty old woollens ; but there is no account- 
ing for tastes, and the clothes-moth caterpillar would 
probably look with wonder at any creature with such 
curious ideas that it would prefer fresh leaves — or still 
more remarkable, bread and meat — to dry flannels, for 
food. 

But the most curious part of the story is that the cat- 
erpillar, besides feeding on the cloth, fashions a little 
house or case for himself out of the fine woollen fibres. 
In this he lives as snugly as a snail in its shell, carrying 
it about with him quite easily ; but he grows very fast, 
and the case cannot grow at all. What does he do 
when he becomes too large for it ? 

No trouble at all. The caterpillar promptly opens 
a slit in the side, forms a neat little patch, and puts it in 



28 Little People. 

as nicely as any tailor. Then, if he has become too 
long as well as too thick, he easily builds a new layer 
around the open end of the case, thus lengthening it as 
much as he needs. 

When the time comes for him to change into a moth, 
he finds his case very useful. With it he suspends him- 
self in a dark corner ; and inside of it can go through 
his transformation in safety, and come out the tiny 
brown " moth miller " we all know so well. 

Perhaps this little moth has found the oddest way of 
living that any of the scale-winged insects* have chosen ; 
but we find among them all sorts of plans for getting 
through life comfortably. Some caterpillars live crowd- 
ed together in a great web, which they spin about 
the branches of cherry and apple trees, devouring the 
leaves till they have to be attacked and killed. These 
are called tent-caterpillars, and they turn into very small 
brown moths. 

Then there are the curious tussock-caterpillars, with 
a long brush at each end of their bodies, and a head 
that looks like a bit of red sealing-wax. Strange to 

* Lepidoptera. 



The Flower- Fairies. 29 

say, the mother tussock-moths have no wings, and when 
they leave the cocoon are not much better off than they 
were in the old caterpillar days. As she cannot fly 
about, mother tussock lays her eggs upon her own 
empty cocoon ; covering them with a curious white sub- 
stance for safe-keeping. 

Now you have made the acquaintance of several 
moths and butterflies, and must learn the difference be- 
tween them, that you may make no mistake when you 
see them together. As a few moths fly in the day-time, 
you might think they were butterflies unless you knew 
how to tell them apart ; but let one rest for a moment on 
a flower, and you shall see. A moth closes his wings 
flat, laying them down with one edge generally lapping 
over the other ; but a butterfly holds his up straight in 
the air, back to back. Then look at the feelers, called 
antenna, that grow from the head. Those of the but- 
terfly are smooth, with a little knob on the end ; while 
the moth's are pointed, and generally branched or feath- 
ered. There are other differences about their bodies 
and wings, but you can easily remember these two ; 
and they will be enough to let you know in a minute 



30 



Little People. 



whether the bright-winged little insect fluttering in 
the vines yonder is a child of the warm sunshine, or 
a lover of the peaceful moonlight and dark evening 
shadows. 



A 



*.+ 1 1 M / / 







CHAPTER II. 



THE MUSICAL ELVES. 

FTER all, night is the time for fairy revels! 
When the noisy day has been hushed to 

sleep by the gen- 
tle twilight, and 
the silver stars be- 
gin to twinkle, and 
the great round 
moon rises 
slowly over the 
hill, through the 
trees, we can hear 
the echo of 
elfin merri- 
ment. Listen 
for a moment 
to the little musicians ; the dewy grass swarms with 
them, their shrill notes come from the bushes around 




32 Little People. 

and the trees above, the very air resounds. Hark to 
the long trilling undertone, the soft contented "cheep, 
cheep," the shrill discussion as to whether Katy did it 
or not ! We almost expect to see the Little Peo- 
ple dancing in the glimpses of the moon ; but it is not 
so easy to find them, for they know how to hide them- 
selves away so cunningly, we can almost suspect them 
of wearing invisible caps. Seeking for them, we blun- 
der about, peering here and there, while the invisible 
piper shrills away, no doubt laughing in his sleeve at 
our efforts to discover his hiding-place. 

In the daytime they cannot escape us so easily ; for 
these musical elves are too large and long-legged not to 
be seen as they skip over the grass, occasionally spread- 
ing fan-shaped wings to whir through the air with a 
lively hum, and perhaps come down plump in the sandy 
road. They love the warm sunshine, and we hear their 
merry music all day long in the fields ; but when night 
comes, the shrill chorus is hushed to a murmur, and 
other voices, unheard at noonday, sound forth in the 
darkness. And yet, are these voices that we hear ? The 
truth is, these Little People are very generally dumb, 



The Musical Elves. 33 

the musical elves as well as others ; but they carry little 
violins and tambourines with them, and form an insect 
orchestra so loud, piercing, and yet melodious withal, 
that even the birds' concerts can hardly surpass them. 
And where do they keep their instruments ? Catch a 
grasshopper and look at the saw-like edge of his hind 
leg, and the parchment wings, or rather wing-covers, 
that protect the real, delicate wings beneath. There are 
his fiddle and fiddle-bow, always ready for him to play 
on. Or look at the hard plates on the Katydid's wing- 
covers, close to the body, and behold the secret of its 
noisy disputes. Did you never see one of these little 
green-coated creatures, that fill the August evenings 
with their never-ending discussions ? You have often 
heard them, for they are by no means rare; yet they 
look so much like the green leaves behind which they 
hide, that it is not strange you have often passed very 
near them without seeing them. 

The Katydid is a slender insect, with a soft, green 
body, long green legs, large thin wing-covers that 
look like leaves, and two very long thread-like feelers. 
Look at Fig. 3 in the picture on page 31 and you will 



34 Little People. 

see him, climbing up to join his friends in the moonlight. 
He lives a happy life up in the branches, or in some 
sheltering vine, protected by the cool leaves, stepping 
from twig to twig on his long legs, and sometimes 
spreading his green wings to fly into the shady depths 
of another tree, when he is tired of the first. All day he 
rests in the shade of broad leaves that rustle in the sum- 
mer breeze, with the birds for neighbors, and perhaps 
a few squirrels ; but there are not many enemies to mo- 
lest him, and he passes the long hot August day peace- 
fully in his cool green tent. Then when darkness falls, 
and the moths come out, Katydid comes out too, and 
begins to assert his opinion. I say his, for Mrs. Katy- 
did never joins in her lord's arguments. She has no 
plates on her wings, poor thing, and whether she has 
any opinions as to whether Katy did it or not, she has 
no voice in the matter ; so very wisely keeps silent, and 
devotes herself to laying her eggs. She puts them in 
the ground, under the grass, and there they lie all win- 
ter ; young Katydid coming forth in the spring looking 
like a little green grasshopper, for he is exactly like his 
parents, only without wings. 



The Musical Elves. 35 

You see the musical elves do not have such a varied 
experience as the flower-fairies, with whom Queen Nat- 
ure has tried such wonderful experiments, but their 
wingless state answers to the caterpillarhood of the 
butterflies ; and they must pass through different stages 
of being, and change their skins often, before they 
gain their perfect shape and size, just as the cater- 
pillars do. 

The full-grown Katydids appear about the first of 
August; and as we seldom notice the little green insect 
before he begins chirping in the trees, we sometimes 
fancy he has just arrived from some other region, like 
the robins in the spring. But he has really been clam- 
bering about on his long legs all summer, only he has 
been silent and wingless till now ; but as soon as the 
fairy queen gives him his new suit and loud-sounding 
castanets, he announces the fact from the tree-top. It 
is said that the gentlest touch on the trunk of that tree 
will silence the noisy little thing in the branches, and 
you may try it for yourselves next summer. 

The Katydids have various relations, some of whom 
look even more like leaves than our familiar friend, and 



36 Little People. 

who have different things to say for themselves. There 
is one well-known insect that keeps up a sharp clacking 
on summer evenings ; not very musical certainly, but 
quite remarkable when we think what a tiny and delicate 
instrument produces the sound. He looks very much 
like the Katydid, but is a little larger, and will sometimes 
walk into the house and startle you with a sudden rasp 
of his castanets from a corner of the room. 

But these pretty creatures are not the best musicians, 
nor the ones whose violins we hear on the still evenings 
earlier in the summer. The crickets play the principal 
part in the concert, after all, and there are so many dif- 
ferent kinds it is no wonder that we can trace such a 
variety of notes. The prettiest of them all is the del- 
icate Tree-cricket, whose " quee, quee," all know so 
well ; but who, like the Katydid, hides away in his leafy 
bower, and is too small and pale to attract attention. 
He is tinted with faint cream color, his thin, almost 
transparent wings are folded on his back like the wings 
of a moth, and are crossed each way by three raised 
lines (Figs. 2 and 3, page 56). He spends the long 
summer days quietly under the leaves, rousing at even- 



The Musical Elves. 37 

ing to begin his little song ; but when the fall comes, he 
chirps all day as well. Frail as he looks, he remains 
till the cold weather comes to silence him, and on frosty 
October nights, when even the Katydids have given up 
their argument, the tree-cricket may be heard — very 
faint and feeble now — from the yellow trees, chirping 
bravely to the last. These are well-named Tree-crickets, 
for they live and die in the branches, mother cricket 
laying her eggs under the young bark, and her little 
ones spending their wingless infancy as well as their 
perfect state in the same sheltering boughs. They are 
brave and contented little creatures, and their low pi- 
ping brings us very pleasant thoughts when we hear 
it in the cool summer evenings or on an autumn 
day. 

But it may be that you are more familiar with the 
Field-crickets, that hop about in the short warm grass all 
summer, and if you look at Fig. 1, in the picture, you 
will see him. This cricket is a queer little elf, and when 
you hear his story I think you will say that he does not 
want for wisdom, but cannot be looked upon as a model 
of amiability. Let us find one as he stands at his front 



38 Little People. 

door, chirping so merrily. Where is his front door ? 
That little hole in the ground behind him, to be sure, and 
you must notice one thing about it, because it will show 
you what a wise little mason the cricket is. If the hole 
he lives in went straight down, like a well, the first rain 
would fill it up, and Mr. Cricket would either be drowned 
or driven out just at the time that he most needs shelter. 
So he is careful to dig a little tunnel in a piece of slop- 
ing ground first, and sink his well at the end of it ; and 
then he has a snug home that is quite dry and comfort- 
able. If we frighten him he will retreat into it backward ; 
and he stands just on the threshold as he chirps, to be 
all ready to run into his cellar in case of danger. If he 
were only more hospitable, and would invite us in to 
taste of his stores, we should find a supply of fruit, seeds, 
and grass tucked away in readiness for dinner. Do you 
think the cricket goes about picking up a living here and 
there, like the careless butterflies, who are as much at 
home in one flower as another ? No, indeed ; he is 
something more than a gay singer, though he has been 
slandered by a good many story- writers, and he works 
hard to lay up a goodly supply of provisions at home, 



The Musical Elves. 39 

against the time of need ; but he keeps them all to him- 
self, and never goes out to dine with a friend. 

Now when our cricket was young he did not live 
this way. He spent his tender infancy under a large 
stone, with his brothers and sisters ; and though you 
might not have thought it the pleasantest nursery in the 
world, the crickets were perfectly satisfied with it, and 
lived together very happily. But, alas ! this state of 
things could not last. As the crickets grew older they 
lost their pleasant ways ; they grew discontented, and, 
sad to relate, quarrelled in the most shocking manner. 
Matters came to such a pass at length that they could 
not be together for two minutes without losing their 
tempers, and kicking and biting in a way that would 
have been a disgrace to any nursery but a cricket's, 
where such things are to be expected. At last they 
found that they really could not live together in peace, 
and that it would be much better for them to separate ; 
so each went off alone and made a new home for him- 
self, living in solitude in these holes in the ground. 
This is not a very good account to give of one of our 
Little People, but if the cricket is selfish and quarrel- 



40 Little People. 

some, we can at least say that he is not stupid. You 
have seen how wisely he plans his house ; now let us 
see what he does when he takes a journey. 

To begin with, the cricket is very fastidious, and 
must look with scorn and disgust on the merry little 
Philodice butterflies, when he sees them enjoying the 
pleasures of a road-side puddle. The cricket also is a 
thirsty being, but he must have the purest water to 
drink, and a fresh clean leaf or flower for a goblet, too ; 
and he is as particular about wetting his feet as a cat is. 
A traveller must put up with a good many things that 
he does not like, so you will think the cricket had much 
better stay at home ; but he does occasionally take a 
trip, and it sometimes happens that he meets with a 
puddle in the course of his wanderings. What is he to 
do ? He seldom uses his wings for flying, he cannot 
always get around, and he very much objects to getting 
wet. What would you do if you came to a stream too 
wide to jump over ? Bring stepping-stones ? So does 
the cricket. He cannot carry anything very large, but 
he goes briskly to work bringing pebbles, sticks, and 
whatever material he can find^ to throw into the water or 



The Musical Elves. 41 

mud, and so form a little bridge on which he can cross 
dryshod, and go merrily on his way. 

Perhaps the oddest of all the crickets is the one 
named after the mole, on account of his fancy for living 
underground. Not content to form a little home just 
under the surface, like the field-cricket, the Mole-cricket 
(Fig. 5, page 56) dives into the ground altogether, and 
there remains, tunnelling under the grass. His forelegs 
are shaped in such a way that he can work his way 
through the earth very easily, just as a mole does ; and 
he is, indeed, so much better suited to life there than to 
spend his days in the air above, that we seldom meet with 
him on the surface of the ground. He is a mischievous 
little gnome, and manages to do considerable harm as he 
prowls about underground ; for he lives on the roots of 
the grass just as his cousins, the field-crickets, live on the 
green blades above, and between them, the grass would 
have a hard time had not the crickets so many enemies. 
As it is, we often see yellow patches on the lawn where 
the mole-cricket has been at work on the roots ; and we 
may thank the mole himself, who makes such unsightly 
little mountain-ranges across that very lawn, that the 



42 Little People. 

cricket has not done more damage. Whether the mole 
does not like to have the cricket imitating his manners 
and appearance, or whether he merely looks upon him 
as a juicy morsel — which is more likely — he is a very 
dangerous creature for his small namesake to meet in 
his travels among the roots, and many a cricket has fur- 
nished a dinner for a hungry mole. These crickets are 
larger than their cousins of the field, being often two 
inches long, which is a very good size for a cricket ; but 
they keep so constantly in their caves and tunnels that 
we do not often see them, large as they are. 

Who has not heard of the House- cricket — the cricket 
on the hearth, the cricket of home, the cricket of ro- 
mance ? Does not the name call up a picture of some 
wide, old-fashioned fireplace, with heavy logs sending 
crackling flame up a great chimney and lighting the room 
so well there is no need for lamps ? And yet, how 
many of you know its contented chirp outside of books ? 
I fear that the house-cricket has gone out of fashion ; but 
he still lurks in old country-dwellings, also in bakeries 
and other places where large fires are kept burning, 
and chirps away contentedly to the dying flame, as if to 




THE CRICKETS' CONCERT. 



The Musical Elves. 



45 



say : a Cheer up ! Our race is not yet extinct — neither 
are you." Perhaps you may hear this cricket some day, 
and if you find it you will see a little yellowish creature, 
about an inch long, who makes his home in some crack 
in the wall, coming out to bask in the fire-light and play 
his little violin upon the hearth, or prowl about, when 
all is still, seeking for something to eat and drink. Like 
his relations the field-crickets, he is always thirsty, and 
will not stay where he cannot find plenty of water. 

People generally like to have these crickets about, 
and sometimes say they bring good luck and happiness 
with them. Perhaps they do, for their comforting chirp 
makes those who hear it feel contented and cheerful as 
they sit round the fire, forgetting their troubles as they 
listen to the happy little musician. 

Everybody knows the grasshoppers.* Wee children 
chase them to get some " molasses," older boys think of 
them in connection with fishing parties, and we have all 
met them in crossing the fields on a hot day, when the 
lively creatures were skittering in all directions. They 
are noisier in the daytime than at night, and sometimes 

* See inital letter, Fig. 2, on page 31. 



46 Little People. 

the field sounds like a great frying-pan, sizzling in the 
rays of the sun ; but it is only the grasshopper-chorus. 

We must look respectfully at these long-legged, 
strong-jawed, swift-flying insects, for, harmless as they 
look, they are greatly dreaded in other countries, and 
some parts of our own, when they come in great num- 
bers. See what strong wings they have, folded under 
their narrow wing-casings,* and you will not be surprised 
to hear that some of their relations, called travelling lo- 
custs, can fly for miles through the air. You must re- 
member that locust means grasshopper ; and though we 
have given the name to a very different insect, which 
has nothing to do with these, it belongs to the flying 
grasshopper by right. 

In Africa and some parts of Asia these locusts travel 
in swarms, like flocks of birds ; only so many of them 
that they darken the sun like a cloud. The farmers 
watch them with terror, knowing too well what will hap- 
pen. The living cloud soon begins to fall like rain ; but 
every drop is a live grasshopper, that begins to eat 

* See Initial letter for Western grasshoppers that eat up whole fields of corn, cab- 
bage, etc. 



The Musical Elves. 47 

greedily the moment it reaches the ground ; and in a few 
hours, grass, grain, vegetables, and even the leaves on 
the trees, disappear before the keen appetites of the 
hungry insects. When they have devoured every 
green thing they rise and fly away, leaving a wilderness 
behind them. Cattle starve for want of grass, the vege- 
tables and fruits have gone, and the African farmer is 
obliged to move, and settle once more in a part of the 
country where the dreadful locusts have not been. 

So the white people there dread these swarms, as 
well they may ; but the natives of the country, who 
have neither cattle nor farms, are well pleased to see 
them coming. They catch and cook the grasshoppers, 
and think them very nice to eat,* and even some white 
people have learned to like them. Do you remember 
what good man mentioned in the Bible lived on locusts 
and wild honey ? 

In another part of the Bible there is a wonderful 
story about these same travelling grasshoppers, and 
how they were the means of punishing a wicked king 
of Egypt, a country where these insects are still but too 

* The Indians in our own country eat grasshoppers. 



48 Little People. 

plentiful ; but they are always called locusts, so you 
must remember the true use of the name. 

Now we must pass on to some very odd relatives of 
the musicians, who have a queer fancy for imitating 
plants, and leaves, and such things, just like the sprites 
that turn themselves into flowers and stones when they 
want to hide. Perhaps you have never seen the curious 
Walking-stick (Fig. 7, page 56). That is not strange, for 
they look so exactly like twigs, as they stand still upon 
a bush, that you would hardly believe them to be alive. 
Watch the long thin stick a minute — such an ordinary- 
looking stick, with three shorter twigs growing out of 
each side, and two more very slender ones in front. 
See the two thin feelers begin to move, and the six legs 
bend their joints, and carry the straight body over the 
plant ! Behold, the stick is walking away ! So far 
from being a part of the plant, he is only one of the 
mischievous Little People, w r ho has taken such an odd 
shape to deceive the enemies that might injure him, and 
walks over the plants feeding upon them ; though, as his 
appetite is not very great, he does not do much harm. 
Besides, Walking-sticks are not very plentiful in the 



The Musical Elves. 49 

North, though in some parts they are pretty well 
known ; but in the southern part of our country they 
are quite common. 

The Walking-sticks, just like any other sticks, are 
green when young, and turn dull brown or yellowish as 
they grow older, which completes their likeness to the 
twigs they live upon, and makes them very hard to dis- 
cover. They are about three inches long when they 
are full grown, but in the hot countries they grow much 
larger, sometimes being a foot in length, and must be 
very queer-looking creatures indeed. 

But of all odd and fantastic shapes, the Praying 
Mantis (Fig. 1, page 56) is certainly one of the 
strangest. You will not be likely to see any in the 
northern part of our country, but if you live or travel 
in the South, you may discover a good-sized green or 
pale-brown insect, with a very long neck holding up 
his forelegs in an attitude that will make you think 
he is saying his prayers. There he sits on the twig 
or fence, perfectly quiet, his arms extended in deep de- 
votion ; and no doubt all the other Little People, at 
least those who are not acquainted with him, consider 



50 Little People. 

him a very pious creature. Alas, that this devout-look- 
ing mantis should be a wicked sorcerer, after all ! That, 
indeed, is what his name means ; for he is by no means 
as good and pious as he looks, and woe to the little and 
helpless insect that ventures within the reach of those 
outstretched arms ! Behold, the sorcerer has him in his 
grasp, and almost before the poor little victim has had 
time to realize what has happened to him, he is crunched 
and devoured by the cruel jaws of this deceitful insect. 

The sorcerer's record would be quite bad enough if 
his only fault were his luring helpless insects to him by 
assuming this prayerful position, but that is not all. He 
is as quarrelsome as he is sly, and does not get on any 
better with his relations than the field-cricket does, and 
when they meet there is a terrible time ! The long fore- 
legs, no longer raised in prayer, are used for striking 
fiercely, and so large and strong are they that they can 
give severe blows ; so that sometimes one will actually 
cut off the head of another, and then eat him up ! Alto- 
gether, the Praying Mantis cannot be a very agreeable 
neighbor, and we can hardly think that he would be very 
popular among the Little People. 



The Musical Elves. 51 

The mother mantis, who is larger and stronger than 
her husband, and quite as warlike, lays her eggs in a 
silky covering that keeps them warm all winter, and the 
young sorcerers come forth in the spring. They have 
no wings at first, but otherwise are just like their par- 
ents ; and not only in appearance, but in disposition 
likewise, as is shown by their soon beginning to quar- 
rel and fight as fiercely as the grown-up ones do. Of 
course, if the old mantises behave so badly we can 
hardly expect their children to know much better, so 
this is not at all surprising. They do not live very 
long, for they grow up in the course of one summer, 
and die in the fall, at what they no doubt consider a 
good old age. 

After these elvish creatures, you will perhaps think 
that there is nothing at all remarkable in the familiar — 
rather too familiar — insect, to find which we must return 
to our own firesides again. But cockroaches, though 
they are not pleasant visitors, and we do not treat them 
very hospitably, have more intelligence than we should 
think could be packed away in so small a body, did we 
not know the wonderful things that even smaller insects 



52 Little People. 

can do. You may be surprised, too, to know that this 
ugly black creature, that runs so swiftly and silently, can 
be any relation to the leaping crickets and grasshoppers, 
with their violins and castanets. But they are all called 
straight-winged * insects ; and if you will examine a cock- 
roach carefully the next time you see one, you will find 
the straight wing-covers, and crumpled wings beneath 
them, very like those of the Katydid or grasshopper. 
We seldom see them fly, however, and, indeed, only Mr. 
Cockroach is furnished with wings ; Mrs. Cockroach, 
like some of the moth-mothers, has none, and is no bet- 
ter off in that way than her children are before they 
are grown up. 

It may be that you have found cockroach-eggs, but 
if you have not, I hardly think you can guess what they 
are like. Indeed, the eggs themselves are not to be 
seen, for they are kept in a neat little brown case which 
the mother carries about with her, and which is shaped 
something like a duck's bill. The eggs lie snugly in 
this, in two rows, and so are kept quite safely till the 
little ones come wriggling out. 

* Orthoptera. 






The Musical Elves. 53 

But we must not forget the queer little Earwig, 
which, though more common in other countries than 
ours, may be known to some of you. Perhaps you 
have heard stories of these insects creeping into peo- 
ple's ears, and making them deaf, but I think you need 
not be troubled about this. They are fond of hiding 
away in holes and crannies, it is true, but I do not 
believe one of you ever knew or even heard of a 
person into whose ear one of these Little People has 
taken a fancy to crawl. As to the dangerous-looking 
nippers they brandish, they are rather small to do 
much harm; so, on the whole, earwigs need not be 
feared. 

They are worth noticing, however, if only for the 
sake of one very curious fashion that they have. Look 
under some loose stones in the month of April, and 
there you may find a mother earwig sitting on her eggs 
like a hen. This is a very strange thing for one of the 
Little People to do — indeed, earwigs are the only ones 
that copy the birds in this, for most of them leave their 
eggs, and often the young ones too, to take care of 
themselves or be cared for by the good queen Nature. 



54 Little People. 

Mother Earwig, however, sits faithfully on her eggs 
under the stone, till June ; when the little ones are 
hatched, and look just like her, except that, like the 
young of all other straight-winged insects, they have 
no wings. Perhaps you have not noticed that the old 
ones have them either, for their wing-cases fit very 
closely to their sides ; but underneath are wings, and 
large ones too, which they can use if they want 
to fly. 

Now, if we examine the Musical Elves and their rela- 
tions, we shall find quite a family resemblance among 
them all, in spite of the many differences caused by their 
different ways of living. They all have the straight 
wing-casings from which they take their family name, 
with thin wings folded underneath like a fan, and strong 
jaws ; whether for eating leaves and grass, or crunching 
smaller insects. Many of them have long legs with 
which they take great leaps — and most wonderful leaps 
they are, when one thinks of the size of the insect that 
these active legs belong to. 

This is the fairy queen's explanation of it : besides 
having very strong legs, these jumpers have wonderfully 



The Musical Elves. 55 

light bodies. You know how light anything is that is 
filled with air, so that sometimes heavy ships are made 
with large air-chambers in them, that they may float 
easily on the water. Well, these leaping insects have 
been using this very plan for thousands of years. Their 
bodies are full of air-cells, instead of heavy bones, such 
as we have, and that is why it is so easy for them to 
take such prodigious jumps. 

Another thing we must remember about these 
straight-winged insects is, that they all come out of the 
eggs looking almost exactly like their parents, only of 
course much smaller and without wings. You remem- 
ber how entirely different the butterflies are from the 
crawling caterpillars, and will see that these elves are 
not much like the flower-fairies, with their strange 
transformations, downy wings, and long honey-sipping 
trunks. 

To be sure, almost all the Little People must pass 
through three different stages of life, which you will un- 
derstand more clearly when you are better acquainted 
with them, but the straight-winged insects never make 
chrysalids in which to take long naps, and wake up with 



56 



Little People. 



a new shape and name, so it is not easy for us to trace 

their transformation. 

Then the hard plates and saw-like legs distinguish 

the Musical Elves. The silent moth, whose only sound 

is the low humming we sometimes hear 

from his wings, flits by us in the dark, 

and we do not know he is there ; but 
we ail can hear the little 
fiddlers of the summer 
night, though we do not 
see them, and can fancy 
their elfin sports in the 
long, dewy grass or rustl- 
ing trees, when the fairy- 
time comes and the weird 
music begins to sound. 






CHAPTER III. 

LITTLE PEOPLE IN AR- 
MOR. 

>HE summer breeze was stirring the del- 
icate grasses in the meadow ; feathery 
red-top in clusters, plumed timothy rais- 
ing his crest high above, and wild oats 
nodding their golden heads as the 
wind passed over them. The thick- 
ly growing stems must have seemed 
quite a forest to the Little People 
wandering among them, 
and those especially 



58 Little People. 

tiny ones who had formed a settlement in the airy 
heads of the red-top no doubt felt themselves raised 
to a dizzy height above the solid earth. 

And what were they ? Not at all like the butterflies 
dancing overhead, nor the long-legged grasshoppers 
that went leaping past ; they were no larger than little 
black gnats, but they were not gnats. Some had gauzy 
wings, though they seldom used them, and all had tiny 
trunks, which they thrust deeply into the grass-stems, 
and then remained quite still, sucking the sweet juices. 

Now this was all very well for the little bugs — which 
we shall see again and learn to know better — but it was 
not so good for the red-tops to be thus used for food ; 
so the fairy queen, who takes as much care of the grasses 
as of the insects that live upon them, found that these 
Aphides were increasing too fast, and must be checked, 
or there would not be enough red-top left in the field 
for the cattle next winter. So she sent one of her little 
soldiers to destroy some of these quiet, but dangerous 
creatures, that were taking the life away from the grass. 
And what a queer-looking soldier he was ! He looked 
something like a lizard, with his six little legs at the 



Little People in Armor. 59 

front of his body, and a soft tail, all red and blue, mov- 
ing constantly about ; but he was not half an inch long. 
He did not look in the least like the Little People clad 
in armor ; * but he was one of them, nevertheless. And 
this will not seem so strange when you think of the 
clumsy caterpillar, and remember how entirely different 
he is from the gay butterfly. Follow our queer lizard- 
like friend for a while, and you will see how he proves 
his kinship with the horny-shelled beetles. Tiny as he 
was, the aphides were so much smaller that he must 
have seemed to them as awful as a crocodile, as he came 
crawling up the grass-stem, straight into their quiet 
colony. Well might they fear, for he had an appetite 
truly alarming, and liked nothing in the world so well as 
a tender young aphis for dinner — -not that one would 
satisfy him, he thought nothing of eating up a whole set- 
tlement. 

But they were stupid little creatures, and, instead of 
running for their lives, they all went on quietly sucking 
the grass-sap, and unconsciously fattening themselves 
for the monster's feast. On he came, and marching 

* Coleoptera. 



60 Little People. 

straight up to a plump aphis, he seized it with his pow- 
erful jaws, and — crunch, crunch ! It was gone in less 
time than it takes to tell it. Crunch, crunch ! another 
was gobbled up, wings and all ; and another went at a 
single mouthful. So on through those feathery grass- 
tops went the destroyer, swallowing the aphides by 
hundreds, and yet leaving plenty behind ; for there are 
so many in the world that even their greediest enemies 
cannot eat them all. 

Now let us follow the fortunes of this enemy, and see 
if you do not recognize him as an old acquaintance by 
and by. When he is nearly half an inch long, he does 
not grow any more ; but he loses his keen appetite, and 
presently fastening himself to a grass-stem, he sheds his 
skin and turns into a tiny chrysalis, very like that of a 
butterfly. There he hangs for a couple of weeks, at 
the end of which the chrysalis-shell breaks open, and 
out crawls — what, but a lady-bird ! our old friend, the 
little red beetle, with black spots, and which every child 
has sent flying home by repeating this warning : 

" Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home, 
Your house is on fire, your children will burn." 



Little People in Armor. 61 

But did you suspect that the lady-bird's children were 
such fierce little creatures, and so well able to take care 
of themselves ? 

As far as appearance is concerned, the lady-birds 
pass through as great a change, when they grow up, as 
the caterpillars do when they become butterflies. It is 
as if an alligator had turned into a turtle. But the lady- 
birds keep many of their old habits ; and though fur- 
nished with wings beneath their horny coats, with 
which they can fly quite swiftly, they still prowl about 
among the grass, plants, and bushes, seeking their vic- 
tims the aphides, and devouring them; though not so 
greedily as in their young days. At the beginning of 
this chapter there is a picture of a lady-bird, with a 
young one near it. 

The lady-birds are pretty little creatures, decked 
with bright colors, both in their babyhood (when they 
are called larvce, a name given to all insects when they 
first come out of the ^gg) and after they are grown up ; 
and many more of Queen Nature's fierce little warri- 
ors wear equally gay uniforms. We ought to know 
these little defenders of the vegetable world, especially 



62 Little People. 

as many other beetles live on the plants themselves 
and do quite as much harm as the bugs ; for it is always 
well to know our friends from our enemies. 

The tiger-beetles are among these bright-colored 
creatures, and in the sunshine they glisten almost like 
jewels. You must have seen and tried to catch these 
tantalizing beetles, as they run and fly by dozens in 
almost any sunshiny, sandy spot. They are so numer- 
ous, and they look so pretty against the sand, that they 
attract our attention at once ; and we try to pick one up 
and look at it more closely. But this is not so easy. 
The wings spread out very quickly from under the hard 
shell, with its ruby and emerald tints, and away goes 
the beetle — not away out of sight, but just out of reach ; 
for he knows that he can escape us, and seems to enjoy 
teasing his pursuer by a display of his bright colors as 
near as he dares come. Besides their ready wings, the 
tiger-beetles have nimble legs likewise ; but it was not 
always so. Our friend the lady-bird was as active in his 
infancy as he was when he grew up ; but not so the 
tiger-beetle. He was a helpless little grub, soft and 
white, and quite unable even to crawl over the ground. 



Little People in Armor. 63 

But he was not so badly off. Queen Nature had given 
him very strong jaws ; and the Little People all know 
how to make the most^of the queens gifts, without ask- 
ing for more or complaining because they have not as 
much as somebody else ; so this grub felt perfectly able 
to take care of himself in the big world. The first thing 
he did was to hide himself in a snug little hole in the 
ground, so that his soft body was protected ; and when 
he was hungry, he put his little round head up out of 
the hole, and waited. Very soon some tiny insect came 
strolling by, not expecting any danger, and seeing noth- 
ing alarming in that still, round thing on the surface of 
the ground. Perhaps he wondered what it was, and 
thought he would take a look at it — then he wished he 
had not been so rash — and then he wished nothing at 
all, for in an instant the strong jaws had caught him, 
and in another he was down the grub's throat. 

. Some of these beetles are called caterpillar hunters, 
and will even climb trees to find their prey. The one 
in the picture has caught a small caterpillar in the 
grass, and is preparing for a hearty meal. 

There is one beetle that does not depend altogether 



6 4 



Little People. 



upon his lively wings and legs for safety. He has a 
very strange means of defence, which has given him the 
name of bombardier beetle. It is a curious device, that 
not one of the other Little People has ever tried ; and I 
am sure that even in fairy tales you never heard of a 
warlike elf, pressed hard, perhaps, by some angry foe, 
defending himself by a tiny pistol Fairies use bee- 
sting spears, and elfin arrows, and other primitive 
weapons ; but this little beetle, to the great astonish- 
ment of all the other Little People, scorns the old 
methods, and prefers to deal with his enemies in this 
remarkable way. Picture the surprise of some unsus- 
pecting insect, who is following this one and getting 
closer than the bombardier cares to have him, when he 
is suddenly shocked by a puff, an explosion, and a 
strange, strong odor in the air ! The one in the 
picture on page 87 seems to be frightening a long- 
horned beetle behind him very badly. We ourselves 
may well be surprised at meeting this curious creature 
for the first time. We take him up to examine him ; he 
is quiet for a little while, and perhaps we hold him rath- 
er too tightly, then puff ! bang ! and we find ourselves 



Little People in Armor. 65 

actually shot by a bombardier-beetle ! To be sure, he 
is not a very dangerous insect, as his weapon, which is 
at the end of his body, is not loaded with bullets, nor 
anything more deadly than a strong acid, which he 
shoots out with quite a little explosion. The bombard- 
ier is a little beetle, rather more than half an inch long, 
with an oval bluish-black body, and light reddish head 
and legs ; so when you meet such a one, beware of his 
invisible gun ! 

So the different beetles hunt their prey, in the sunny 
fields, in country roads, in woods and gardens ; but a 
few have found that they can get a living in the water 
more easily. Perhaps you have seen water-beetles, 
with their feet spread out in the shape of oars, rowing 
swiftly through the water ; or, if you do not know the 
large ones, you must be acquainted with the queer little 
" whirligigs " like those in the picture. In some quiet 
pool, where the brook pauses to rest a moment, and 
whisper to the ferns and jewel-weed hanging over it, 
before running on its way, the whirligigs spin about 
on the surface, leaving shining curves in their wake. 
Have you not often tried to catch them, in the midst of 



66 Little People. 

their swift waltz ? They are pretty safe out there in 
the water, twirling about in such a bewildering dance, 
and we can hardly see what they look like, or know 
what to call them. But if we can catch one with a 
scoop-net, and hold his wriggling body fast for a mo- 
ment, we shall discover that he is a real beetle, with a 
horny shell, wing-covers, and all. He is a hunting-bee- 
tle, too, like all those we have noticed ; and he catches 
his prey even while he is whisking over the water. 
When he sees a tender morsel coming, he dives under 
it, and so attacks it on its unprotected side ; which, if 
it is a soft-bodied insect, must be an easy matter for 
the whirligig. This seems hardly fair, especially as 
the whirligig keeps his own hard side down, know- 
ing well that what he does to others, others can do 
to him. 

All these beetles, you see, live on other insects ; but 
there are some that are useful to us in a different way. 
Their mission in life is to eat up all kinds of decaying 
matter, and unclean things that would make the air bad, 
if these Little People did not attend to putting them out 
of the way ; and in many ways they are more wise and 



Little People in Armor. 67 

intelligent than either the brave hunting-beetles, or the 
mischievous plant-eating ones. 

Perhaps the most wonderful of all is the burying- 
beetle, or grave-digger. In spite of his gloomy name, 
he is quite a gay object to look at, in his plaid suit of 
orange and black, and if we meet him in the woods we 
may see a curious sight. How the burying-beetle finds 
out that he has work awaiting him over on the other 
side of the grove, we cannot tell, though as his scent is 
very keen, that may have something to do with it ; at 
any rate, he is always on hand where he is needed. 
Watch him as he spreads his wings and flies away 
through the trees, as if there were no time to be lost. 
Swiftly he takes his way to a little knoll whereon a dead 
bird is lying, already surrounded by several other bury- 
ing-beetles ; and here our friend drops to the ground, 
and hastens to join his relations. The bird is a robin, 
and a hundred times larger than any of the beetles now 
walking solemnly around it, now and then pausing, ap- 
parently to consult with each other about the ceremo- 
nies they are to perform. 

Other assistants come in from all sides, each in his 



68 Little People. 

black and orange uniform, and they soon go to work in 
earnest. Crawling under the bird, they begin to dig 
away the earth, throwing it out at the sides ; and as soon 
as they have formed a little hollow, some of them will 
run up over the soft feathers to press poor Cock Robin 
into his grave. It is rather slow work for Little People 
only an inch long, with no spades or pick-axes to work 
with, but they scratch away patiently with their claws, 
and at last their efforts are rewarded by the gradual 
sinking of the bird into the earth. But they make their 
graves very deep, and must work hard if they do all to- 
morrow. 

Bright and early they are at it again, digging, tramp- 
ling, pulling from beneath, pushing from above, and 
deeper and deeper the bird sinks into its last nest, to be 
covered up by the busy beetles. What kind little elves, 
to give the poor bird burial, and work so hard at its 
grave ! But it is not from charity alone that they do 
this. They do not know what good will come from 
their faithful performance of their duty, how they are 
purifying the air, and enriching the earth ; they just do 
what the fairy queen tells them, and all the duty they 



Little People in Armor. 69 

know anything about is to prepare a snug place for their 
little beetles. 

This is why they bury dead birds, toads, snakes, 
mice, and anything else they can find ; like the ones in 
the picture, which have discovered a mouse ; though 
you may scarcely understand how their young ones can 
be benefited thereby. But wait a minute. Now that 
the robin is fairly buried, many of the beetles fly away ; 
but the females remain, and crawling into the earth, 
lay their eggs on the bird's body. Then, having pro- 
vided for their families, they come out and fly away 
too, leaving the eggs to the care of Queen Nature. In 
about two weeks the soft grubs are hatched, and find 
a supply of food close at hand. This, of course, is the 
dead bird, which they like very much, and which serves 
to nourish them till they are old enough to leave the 
home of their infancy ; but they do not come forth di- 
rectly to the fresh air. They must go still deeper into 
the ground, and there spend a time of rest and sleep, 
just as the caterpillars do, before taking on the armor 
and wings of perfect beetles. 

Here is a curious fellow ! See his thin, roughened, 



70 Little People. 

bluish-black wing-covers, and the broad, yellow shield 
on his back, stamped with a cross. He looks like one 
of the old knights who fought for the Holy Land ; so 
that, indeed, he has been given their name of crusader, 
from the cross which is his badge, as it was theirs. But 
all he tights for is the purity of the air ; and he does not 
even know that he is doing that, for he esteems such an 
unpleasant thing as carrion very highly as food, just as 
the burying-beetles do ; and he may be often found in 
their company. But he has not quite as much wit as 
they, and does not attempt to bury his food ; but lives, 
with his numerous relations, in any spot where they 
may find plenty to eat. It may be said in his favor that 
he is much more amiable than the clean, but ill-tempered 
crickets, who could not dwell together in peace, you 
remember ; while these carrion-beetles pass the most 
peaceful and happy lives in their unsavory dwellings. 

But all scavenger-beetles do not live on animal food ; 
some prefer decayed wood, which does not seem so un- 
pleasant, though the others are really more useful to us. 
Some of this kind are large and handsome, like the pol- 
ished brown " horn-bug/' or stag-beetle, with his sharp 



Little People in Armor. 71 

pincers, that can hurt not a little when they grasp a 
meddlesome finger. Others are covered with fine brown 
hairs, like the pretty Cetonia-beetles, that we sometimes 
see buzzing over the last year's dead leaves in spring, 
and looking almost like bumble-bees, from a distance. 
They lay their eggs in decayed wood, which the little 
ones live on, but are fond of the fresh sap from a tree 
after they are grown up ; however, as they only taste 
that which they find on the outside of the trunks and 
cannot bore into them, they do no harm. 

I think you must all know the " tumble-bugs/ 1 
(See page 57.) What funny, clumsy creatures they are, 
especially when they are trying to get home with a 
heavy load. Have you not seen them working at a 
ball of manure and earth, which they have rolled up like 
a marble, and push along, first with one pair of legs 
and then another ? How they tug, and strive, and roll, 
and pull! Here, in a flat place, " tumble-bug" gets 
along very well, rolling the ball before her ; but then she 
comes to a little hill, and has to push hard ; it won't go 
up ; she turns around and kicks with her hind feet, 
bracing herself against the ground. Ball goes up a 



72 Little People. 

little way, tumble-bug after it ; a fresh tug, it sticks 
fast. Round goes tumble-bug to the other side and 
pulls ; away goes the ball over the top of the hillock, 
and rolls down the other side, tumble-bug and all. 
Tumble-bug isn't hurt, but jumps up and begins to push 
again. After a while, when she finds a place to suit 
her, she will dig a deep hole and bury the ball in it ; 
but she generally travels over a good deal of ground 
before she chooses a spot. 

And why should she take so much trouble about 
such a ball ? Ah, it is to contain something very pre- 
cious indeed, a little egg y which she will lay in the middle 
of it ; and though she will never see the baby-beetle af- 
ter it is hatched, she is very anxious to leave it well 
provided for. This she has done by placing the egg in 
the ball, for when the young one comes out, it will feed 
upon it, away underground, just as the young burying- 
beetles did upon the food prepared for them ; coming 
out, when it is old enough, a plump, black, glossy beetle, 
able to earn its own living. 

All the beetles we have noticed thus far have been 
more or less helpful to us in different ways, but now we 



Little People in Armor. 73 

are coming to some that often do harm. Their dwell- 
ings are generally cleaner and prettier than those of the 
scavenger and hunting-beetles, and they often wear 
brighter suits ; but farmers and gardeners look upon 
most of them with no friendly eyes. This is because 
they live on plants ; and while some feed only on weeds, 
others attack flowers, fruits, and vegetables, and some- 
times do a great deal of injury. 

Of all these plant-eating beetles, the one you know 
~best is the common " June-bug." With the summer 
warmth he appears, and straightway comes into the 
house if he sees a light, apparently confident of a wel- 
come. He is a fat, stupid, blundering creature, flying 
right into our faces when we go out after dusk, and 
dropping to the ground with an astonished buzz. Have 
you not often chased him about the room, trying to 
catch him as he bumps against the ceiling, and hums up 
and down the walls, usually ending by tumbling behind 
a picture, or falling to the floor, where he lies on his 
back kicking in a stunned, helpless way ? Perhaps you 
have played with him, and teased him, and tried to har- 
ness him to a paper wagon ; and I hope you have not 



74 Little People. 

pulled off his poor legs when he would not go fast 
enough. It cannot be very much fun for you, and it 
means a great deal of pain and trouble for him. If you 
put him out the window instead, he will go humming 
away through the evening air ; and if it is not too dark, 
you may see him join a whole swarm of other June-bugs, 
buzzing about the oak-tree near, and dimly seen as they 
flit in and out of the leaves. In the morning we notice 
these leaves are full of holes, showing where the June- 
bugs have had their supper the night before. We call 
them ]wxi<t-bugs ; but, remember, they are really beetles, 
with brown wing-covers, and a yellowish down under 
their bodies ; and that bugs are something quite differ- 
ent, as we shall presently see. 

When these beetles were first hatched, and called 
grubs, or larvcz, they lived in the ground, like so 
many other young beetles ; but what do you think their 
food was ? Roots ! and the careful mother-beetle 
placed her eggs at the foot of a tree accordingly, that 
the little ones might not want. There was no danger 
of such a good supply being used up ; so the grubs, in- 
stead of changing into full-grown beetles in a few weeks, 



Little People in Armor. 75 

liked their dwelling so well that they stayed there two 
or three years. But every spring there are plenty of 
June-bugs old enough to come out, and no doubt they 
enjoy their new life, after being shut up in the dark 
earth so long. 

There is another plant-eating beetle that you may 
have found a good plaything, and it is certainly as much 
fun as many a mechanical toy. I mean the " snap- 
beetle/' There are snap-beetles, or spring-beetles, of 
different colors and sizes ; but the little brown ones are 
quite common, and probably you have often seen them. 
When you lake one between your thumb and finger, 
you will feel a queer, jerking movement in the narrow 
part of his body, between the chest and wing-covers. 
Now put him carefully down on his back, and see what 
will happen. First he will kick a little and try to turn 
over, like other beetles, but his legs are too short ; 
then he will quiet down and seem inclined to make the 
best of the situation ; but, in another second, snap ! up 
he goes in the air, and comes down right side up again ! 
By what magic does he do this ? Well, he does not 
carry a fairy wand, but he has a little arrangement in his 



76 Little People. 

back that he finds quite as useful ; and all he has to do 
is to bend his body a little, when the spring will work, 
sending him several inches into the air, like an acrobat 
in a circus. But some snap-beetles are much larger 
than these little brown ones, and, if you have ever seen 
the great eyed elater, as he is called (elater being an- 
other name for snap-beetle), you will probably remem- 
ber him. He is a strange-looking creature indeed, with 
two great black, velvety spots on his gray back. They 
look like eyes, but are only spots ; his real eyes are lit- 
tle gleaming specks in the front of his head. This 
beetle is much larger than his little brown relatives, for 
he is often an inch and a half long ; so, of course, he 
can leap much higher. 

This is the one that the children in the picture are 
watching, while below them you may see his cousin, the 
lightning elater of the warm countries. He has not the 
velvety black spots, but there are two smaller ones on 
his back, from which streams a bright light, shining 
through the dark tropical forest with dazzling radiance, 
after the sun has set. It must be very beautiful, and 
you can imagine what it is like by looking at our own 




Large weevil. 
Wheat-weevil (magnified). 



Lightning elater. 



THE WONDERFUL SNAP-BEETLE. 



Little People in Armor. 79 

little fire-flies. They are beetles, too, though their wing- 
covers are soft, instead of being horny, like those of the 
other Little People in armor ; and when you see them 
by daylight you may notice their beetle shape, and their 
black and yellow striped suits. Nobody pays much at- 
tention to such plain little things in the daytime, but 
when night comes and they light their lanterns, and go 
dancing with them down the lane, we are ready enough 
to admire. If you are careful you may catch one, for 
they do not fly very fast, and holding it gently in your 
closed hand, see how it lights up your palm. It cannot 
burn you, for it carries cold fire, and what but a fairy 
could do that ? We may fancy any number of pretty 
things about this little insect, how it illumines the fairy 
rings when the elves have a ball, or sends its little flash- 
light through the woods to guide some benighted trav- 
eller safely home. The fire-flies are especially fond of 
damp places, and when you pass a swamp after dark 
you may see them glancing over its surface in swarms. 
They remind us of some fairy tales about people that 
have been condemned by a cruel enchantment to wear 
an ugly shape all day, but between sundown and sun- 



80 Little People. 

rise are allowed to take their true form and become 
beautiful. 

There are others whose glory is in the full sunlight.- 
Have you never seen a beautiful gilded creature, his 
shining armor reflecting rainbow hues, as he runs upon 
the leaves of some tall weed, nibbling them so full of 
holes that they look like lace-work ? He is seldom 
found alone, but sometimes a plant is seen covered with 
these splendid beetles, glowing like jewels, and seeming 
really out of place in our sober northern climate, which 
generally leaves such gorgeous creatures to the hot 
countries. They are about half an inch long, and rather 
broad ; and they are bright enough to attract attention 
a long way off. They generally keep their colors quite 
well, so most people who find them capture them at 
once, and keep them for ornaments. But all the brilliant 
leaf-eating beetles are not so accommodating in this 
way. Some very beautiful little ones have the power of 
changing from a splendid polished jewel, shining with 
blue, crimson and gold, into a very common-place little 
beetle, with a brownish transparent shell on his back, 
and no beauty at all. His safety lies in this kind of 



Little People in Armor. 81 

magic, for nobody values him or cares to keep him 
after he has lost his beauty ; and he has disappointed 
many a young- naturalist, who, returning for another 
look at the prize he has secured, is much surprised 
to find so ordinary a creature where he left such a 
brilliant one. Altogether, these Little People conduct 
themselves generally after the fashion of tricksy elves, 
playing pranks to astonish us mortals, and doing more 
real mischief by spoiling the leaves of our plants. 

It would seem as if the list of beetles had no end, 
but we must content ourselves with noticing the largest 
ones, and those we are most likely to meet with in our 
summer rambles. We are pretty sure to find the long- 
horned beetles with their creaking wing-covers, for there 
are plenty of them everywhere, and some kinds are very 
handsome. One wears a polished blue suit, with a yel- 
low cloak over his shoulders, which makes him look 
very fine indeed. Another is clad in black velvet,, with 
golden ornaments, and has a sunny home in the golden- 
rod. Another is of a plain light brown all over, with 
wonderfully long feelers ; and still another, who lives 
upon the milk- weed, dresses in coral-red, with black dots. 

6 



82 Little People. 

All these are called Capricorn beetles, because Capri- 
corn means goat, and some mountain goats have very 
long horns like these insects. The people of Germany, 
however, call them " fiddlers," because of the squeaking 
noise they make by rubbing their wing-covers together, 
somewhat as the straight-winged insects do. 

We must not forget the wonderful little Meloe, 
sometimes called oil-beetle. His story is really as 
strange as anything the Little People can tell us. 
Some day, walking down a country lane, you will see a 
plump, comfortable-looking blue beetle lazily sprawling 
over the leaves of a buttercup. His short wing-covers 
make him look rather odd, for they do not half cover 
his body, which is all one shade of indigo. He looks 
entirely too lazy and contented ever to have had any 
adventures, but I assure you he could tell quite a won- 
derful story if he had the gift of speech. To begin 
with, he came out of an egg cradled in a buttercup, the 
daintiest, prettiest little nest any fairy could wish to live 
in ; and there he stayed, a tiny grub, feeding on the gold- 
en pollen of the blossom. Should he not have been sat- 
isfied with such a pretty home ? But no, like some other 



Little People in Armor. 83 

young people, our beetle larva grew restless. He didn't 
want to stay at home. He wanted to travel and see 
the world, and have a good time. But how was he to 
manage it ? He was a tiny grub, unable to get out of 
the buttercup alone, and it seemed quite absurd for him 
to think of undertaking a journey; but "where there's a 
will there is a way." 

One day there came to the buttercups a very busy 
citizen of a very bustling town. It was a town where 
laziness was against the law, and offenders were put to 
death ; so you may be sure this was a very industrious 
creature indeed, that worked hard all day, and never 
went out for mere pleasure. Of course it was a bee 
that had come to the buttercups for honey, and there 
met little Meloe. Whether they had much conversa- 
tion, and the little grub was charmed with his new 
acquaintance's talk about the great town and its excite- 
ments, I do not know ; but the grub insisted on go- 
ing home with the busy bee, who, by the way, would 
have much preferred not to take him. But fixing him- 
self firmly on the bee's back, our grub was carried 
safely through the air perhaps for miles, till they 



84 Little People. 

reached the beehive. There he slipped off, and pro- 
ceeded to make a snug home in the wax ; which he de- 
cided at once was what he had always wanted, and was 
much nicer, both to live in and to eat, than the butter- 
cups. But, like many people who leave the dull but 
peaceful country for a gay, busy, noisy city, the Meloe 
grew tired at last of the bustling hive. He remem- 
bered his old home by the roadside, the golden butter- 
cups, the fresh air. He was tired of hiding away from 
the jealous bees, who would have objected had they 
found him stealing their wax. So he resolved that he 
would return to his birthplace, and set off with a bee 
that was going out for the day. How many different 
flowers the Meloe passed on that strange journey, and 
how he knew his native buttercups from any other 
plant, is another of Queen Nature's secrets ; but it is 
certain that he did know it, else we should not find him 
here to-day, a grown-up beetle, eating the buttercup 
leaves. He has had quite enough travel in his young 
days, and is contented to stay at home for the rest 
of his life, or take very short trips from one butter- 
cup to another, or tumble carelessly about under our 



Little People in Armor. 85 

very feet, confidently trusting that we will turn out 
for him. 

Now we must glance at some queer-looking beetles 
that people generally dislike, because they injure our 
plants so much. These are the weevils. Many of them 
are so tiny that they live in peas, rice, and wheat-grains, 
and do a great deal of harm by eating these things. 
Their heads are drawn out into the shape of a long 
trunk or snout, like those in the picture on page jj, one 
of which has just crept out of a wheat-grain ; and by 
this we may always know them from other beetles. 

The young ones, or larvae, of these weevils are help- 
less creatures without legs, and live inside stems of 
plants, or seeds, or beneath the bark of trees ; where 
they feed, out of sight, and manage to do a great deal 
of harm in a quiet way. The plants would be even 
more injured than they are by these troublesome creat- 
ures, were it not for their good friends the birds ; who 
kill and eat all the young weevils they can find, search- 
ing under the bark with a sharp beak and bright eyes, 
till they discover the mischievous larvae hidden there. 
In some of the hot countries, very large weevils are to 



86 Little People. 

be found ; and there the people have taken a fancy to im- 
itate the birds, and eat the grubs too, only they are 
supposed to be much nicer when fried, I think we 
should all regard this dish as worse than boiled grass- 
hoppers, for these larvae are by no means pleasant to 
look upon, being something like large, legless cater- 
pillars. But then the people of the hot countries have 
a very curious taste. 

You must have discovered by this time that, different 
as they are, all the beetles are something alike in cer- 
tain ways. They all pass through three stages of life, 
just as the butterflies do ; but when they become perfect 
beetles, they look very different from the flower fairies. 
Their thin brownish wings are hidden under wing-cov- 
ers, generally hard, but occasionally quite soft, called 
elytra, which protect the delicate wings and back from 
injury. They have six legs, a pair of jointed feelers, 
and generally strong jaws. We must notice, too, that 
their bodies are divided into three parts : which, indeed, 
is the case with all the Little People ; but the divisions 
can be seen so much more plainly in these hard-shelled 
creatures than in most other kinds, that we have not 



Little People in Armor. 



87 



observed it until now. The first division is the head, 
out of which the feelers grow ; then comes the chest, or 
thorax, from which come the legs and wings ; and the 
rest of the body is called the abdomen. In the beetles 
the wings and elytra are folded down over the abdomen, 
which is generally the largest part. All this you may 
see in the common June-bug, or any other beetle, and 
will begin to understand some of the laws Queen Nat- 
ure has made for these little subjects of hers. 




CHAPTER IV. 






THE WATER-SPRITES. 

ID you ever see a swamp? Not a 

little wet place in the woods, where 

^ marsh-marigolds and jack-in-the- 

pulpits grow, nor a big empty 

Hr field where water stands in the 

^z~ '~zl ^_r spring- and un- 

H^- wholesome vapors 



arise in summer ; 
i'^w-V but a real broad swamp 
\ " with a stream flowing through 
k the middle ; a swamp full of blue 
flags and calamus, dear to country 
|||&^ children, and cardinal flowers or 
53^ forget-me-nots, according to the 
season. A swamp re- 
sounding with trilling 
and piping from the swell- 
ing throats of a thou- 




The Water -Sprites. 89 

sand frogs. A swamp through which a boat might 
push with the stream, disturbing water-birds among the 
cat-tails, and possibly wild ducks. If you have never 
seen such a swamp you know nothing about one part of 
fairyland, and when you do you will probably want to 
stay there longer than would be well for you, for we are 
not made to live in damp, marshy places like the water- 
sprites. You will listen to the frogs' weird music in 
wonder, and watch their green heads and bright eyes 
peeping up at you from the water all around. You will 
perhaps get wet in trying to reach the water-flowers 
that grow out of reach. You will wonder, too, at the 
bright things that flash by you every now and then 
through the sunny air. One shoots itself at the stem of 
a blue-flag like a little gold arrow. How it shines in 
the sun ! You put out a cautious hand to grasp it, but 
it is gone in a twinkling to strike another plant, beyond 
your reach. You can see no wings, they whir so 
swiftly, and think it must be a gleaming dart some elf 
has struck into the stem, but you cannot catch it to 
make sure. Then another golden gleam passes, and 
this time you can see the great shining wings, and per- 



go Little People. 

haps the round bright eyes and slender body. And 
here comes a brilliant blue one, that looks as if it had 
been cut out of sapphire, with four clear, flashing wings. 
There is a plain brown one, its lace-like wings barred 
with black, and there another with a bright scarlet 
body. Here are little dancing creatures, and there glit- 
tering, strong ones with a swift, straight flight, pursuing 
the smaller insects of the air. And besides all these, 
there are many wonders in the water under the round 
lily-leaves, where they can only be found by careful 
search. For this we must dive, not only into the deep- 
est part of the swamp, but into the water itself, and 
there, under the still surface of the pool, below the lily- 
pads, we come upon the home of the water-sprites. A 
very pleasant home it seems on this warm summer day. 
The lilies , broad leaves cast great shadows on the bot- 
tom, and the sunshine around them filters through the 
cool rippling water with a softened light. The smooth 
green stems of the water-plants serve as stairs to the 
upper world, as the sprites will presently make plain to 
us. Near the edges of the stream, soft green moss 
forms the most delightful fairy grottoes and bowers. 




THE HOME OF THE WATER-SPRITES. 



The Water- Sprites. 93 

And who lives in this " dim water world " ? Fat green 
frogs, like wrinkled dwarfs, lurk in nooks and crannies, 
or swim to the shore and jump into the water again 
with a loud " kerchunk." Crowds of funny little black 
pollywogs wriggle at the bottom of the shady pools. 
Little fish, that the country boys call "shiners," poke 
about in the mossy grottoes, bumping their inquisitive 
noses against every pebble ; and some larger fish swim 
through there too, looking about them in a hungry way 
that must be very alarming to the smaller inhabitants of 
the pool. 

But these are not the Little People we have come to 
visit. We will search for them now, but you must not 
expect to find them by any resemblance they bear to 
those shining things in the air above. Ah, here comes 
a little brownish sprite, about an inch long, paddling 
slowly along on six legs. It has no wings, nor, as far 
as we can see, any face but two round eyes, that look 
around indifferently. It seems the most peaceable of 
sprites, and we wonder if it can really be connected with 
the beautiful and terrible race of draeon-flies. To see it 
wandering about, or swimming slowly through the cool 



94 Little People. 

water, we should think it only bent on finding a quiet 
life among the water-plants ; and that, though it is not 
very handsome, it is at least gentle and harmless. Ah, 
so thought the little insect that was swimming to meet 
it but now, twitching its long tail and sporting in the 
ripples in the merriest fashion. Perhaps this nice, quiet 
creature might make a good playmate. Let us see — 
Oh, oh, what is this ? Horror of horrors ! The whole 
smooth face of the brownish grub has dropped like a 
mask, and out springs a pair of terrible pincers that 
the poor little victim cannot possibly resist or escape. 
What, then, is our quiet, peaceful grub ? Behold him, a 
fierce robber, who hides his cruel face and terrible trap 
behind a mask, and lurks in mossy recesses, or swims 
slowly through the dim pools, lying in wait all the time 
for unwary travellers ! Let not the little insect hope to 
escape this strong grasp ; it is drawn in and devoured 
in a minute, while the young dragon-fly, as we now 
know him to be, shuts up his mask, which is fastened 
by a hinge to his under lip, and goes serenely on his 
way, to find new victims. What a terrible creature to 
be living here in this placid stream, amid so many lovely 






The Water- Sprites. 95 

surroundings ! What a wonderful one, too, with his 
mask and his trap ; which, after all, are only the armor 
that Queen Nature has given him, showing that she 
sent him forth to make war on other insects, lest there 
should be too many in the world. If the little larva we 
have just seen devoured had lived to grow up, he would 
have turned into a troublesome fly ; so these dragons 
of the water are really of great use to us. 

He is well content with his life under the water, and 
does not hasten to leave it, often spending a year there ; 
but at last a change comes over him, as it came over 
the caterpillars and beetle-grubs. He grows tired of the 
pool. He begins to dream of the upper world he has 
never seen, and long for the air he has never breathed, 
and no doubt wonders what strange plants are these 
which*cast their shadows into the water, or drop their 
blossoms upon it, where he can see them floating. He 
is restless now, and does not care to eat — a symptom 
which his neighbors are no doubt very glad to see — and 
at last, feeling that he can bear it no longer there under 
the water, he begins to crawl slowly up the stem of a 
tall water-plant. Perhaps he is a little anxious about 






96 Little People. 

the feeling he will have when he reaches the air, for 
he knows no more about it than a fish does ; but new 
breathing-organs must have been growing in him, for 
he comes straight on, out of the water, up, up the stem, 
as if he were quite used to it. When he reaches a 
comfortable place to stop, perhaps a broad leaf, per- 
haps a flower on top of the plant, he stands still. Now 
watch him ! He will not remain a grub, now that he 
has left his old life and taken up his abode in the fresh 
air. For a while he waits, probably resting ; then he 
begins to stretch, and pull, and tug, until his horny 
grub-skin cracks down the back just as a chrysalis does, 
and slowly the perfect dragon-fly crawls out. For once 
in his life he is weak and helpless, and woe to him if a 
hungry bird spies him at this time ; but this state of 
things does not last long. The sunshine will dry and 
strengthen his wings just as it did those of the butter- 
fly, until at last four transparent sails stand out from 
the slender body. They are not covered with colored 
scales like a butterfly's wings, but they are none the 
less very beautiful, shining like diamonds, and some- 
times spotted or crossed with bars of brown or blue 



The Water- Sprites. 97 

(Fig. 4, page 92). They are neither held straight up 
like the wings of a butterfly, nor folded like those of a 
moth (though many smaller ones do point their wings 
backward over the body), nor are they hidden beneath 
wing-casings. They stand straight out on each side, 
without a fold or crease, as if to show their full beauty. 
How they shine ! How the great eyes shine too — as 
well they may, for they are each made up of a thousand 
little bright eyes put together ; so there is little that the 
dragon-fly can't see. What a long, slender body ! It 
is not at all like the thick, short grub ; and as we go on 
examining the differences one by one, we could hardly 
believe that the fly and the grub are really the same, 
had we not watched the change with our own eyes, 
and, besides, had the wonderful caterpillar transforma- 
tion to remember. In one way the dragon-fly has 
altered his mode of life even more than the butterfly, 
for now he is an air-breathing insect, while as a grub 
he could only live in the water. On the other hand, he 
has not changed his diet, nor his sharp jaws ; he has 
only lost the mask covering them, and appears ten 

times more dreadful with his fierce face exposed, as he 

7 



98 Little People. 

chases the helpless insects of the air. He needs no 
concealment now ; no matter if his terrible appearance 
does frighten his prey, it cannot get away from him. 

The French and German people call these insects by 
names which mean " maidens of the water, " but they 
must have been thinking only of their graceful shape 
when they gave them such gentle-sounding names. 

Some dragon-flies measure nearly four inches across 
the wings ; and when they get into the house, which 
happens occasionally, if it is not far from the water, they 
often frighten children, and some grown people too, for 
that matter. Although there are many foolish stories 
about the dragon-fly, you need not fear him ; for he 
does not sting, and his sharp jaws are only for his vic- 
tims the small flies, that he will seize in the air. Let 
him stay in the room awhile, without trying to frighten 
him or drive him away ; but watch him circle around 
catching flies and mosquitoes, till he has quite cleared 
the room of those troublesome pests. 

But all dragon-flies are not so large. The little gold 
arrows of the swamp, with their brilliant bodies and 
straight folded wings, are little more than an inch long 




The Water-Sprites. 99 

sometimes ; and as we have seen, their colors and shapes 
are too numerous to count. These creatures are sel- 
dom seen in dry places ; they still cling to the neighbor- 
hood of their native pools, although they never go into 
the water again ; they would drown there, now that 
they have formed the habit of breathing air. They lay 
their eggs just under the water, however, generally on 
the stem or leaf of some water-plant, and by and by 
the little grubs will hatch, to pass through the same 
curious changes. 

Are these all the water-sprites ? Let us see. Many 
strange creatures flit over the pool. Here is a fearful 
one, with two long, sharp horns crossed in front (Fig. 
7, page 92. Dear me, such a monster is enough to 
frighten anybody ! When he is at rest his great wings 
are crossed on his back, but otherwise he is much like a 
large dragon-fly. In fact, he is a near relation, Horned 
Corydalis by name, and his life is very similar to his 
cousin's. 

But there are other sprites in the pool, whose ways 
are not quite the same. The strong dragon-flies have a 
long life in the air as well as in the water, conquering 

MffC, 



ioo Little People. 

all the weaker insects around them ; but the same can- 
not be said of the May-fly or day-fly, also called 
Ephemera, which means creature of a day. They are 
pretty little things, with their delicate wings and small 
bodies, and they dance and fly all day long, up and 
down, up and down, in the sunshine over the stream, 
or resting for a moment on the blue flags or cardinal 
flowers. And we can admire these dainty flies without 
stopping to think of their cruelties, for they are indeed 
as harmless as they look, at least in their winged state ; 
for they have no jaws, but soft mouths, and they do not 
eat at all. Then how do they live ? Well, they do not 
live very long ; they are creatures of a day, you remem- 
ber, and their merry life in the air lasts only from morn- 
ing till night. For such a short time they need no 
nourishment, but in their water-life they get as much to 
eat as the dragon-flies do, and live there sometimes for 
two years. The Ephemera grubs are smaller and more 
slender than the dragon-grubs, and have no masks ; but 
they have sharp jaws, with which to catch their prey 
and devour it when it is caught. This, after all, is their 
real life ; but before they die they take one day for en- 



The Water- Sprites. 101 

joyment in the upper air. Swimming in the water, the 
grub bursts its shell, and in a flash the perfect day-fly 
shoots into the air ; no hesitation, no long process of 
wing-drying for the day-flies ! They have not time for 
it ; they must make the most of their one day of sun- 
shine. Many kinds, however, shed their skin a second 
time ; leaving it clinging to a plant, and looking like 
the living insect. Sometimes, in a stream where there 
are many day-flies, they may be seen coming from the 
water in every direction on a bright summer morning, 
and speeding aw r ay to join their companions, already 
dancing above the sparkling ripples. Happy Ephem- 
era ! one day of sunshine is enough to fill their cup of 
enjoyment to overflowing. It is all they want, and 
when the sun goes down, they just fold their gauzy 
wings and sink down too ; so tired with their long, long 
day that they go to sleep at once, and never wake up. 
Sometimes they live long enough to see the evening 
lamps lighted ; when they will circle around them in 
swarms, like those in the picture at the beginning of 
this chapter. And the next day there will be just as 
many more Ephemera to dance and rejoice in the sum- 



102 Little People. 

mer glory, and fall asleep at night. One thing they 
have to do before they die, only one, and all the rest of 
the time is play. They must lay their eggs below the 
surface of the water, to hatch into future day-flies ; but 
this only takes a moment, and they again fly off, to 
dance till sundown. 

Somewhat like the day-flies are the caddice-flies or 
water-moths, so called because they are shaped a little 
like a real moth, with rounded wings (Fig. 6, page 
92). But they lead a curious life in the water. They 
are not formed quite like other grubs, who all wear hard, 
horny skins, almost like a beetle's shell ; but they are 
soft, and would soon be snapped up by the greedy 
dragon-grubs or fishes if they were unprotected. How- 
ever, the caddice is pretty well able to take care of him- 
self. Whether he watched the snails in their safe, 
strong shells till he wondered why he couldn't have 
a shell too, or whether the fishes told him about the 
wonderful building of some sea-creatures, I do not 
know ; but in some wav the caddice has learned to 
make a very nice little home for himself. It matters 
very little what material he has, so he uses anything 



The Water- Sprites. 103 

that comes handy; and constructs a little case out 
of sticks, stones, straws, shells — anything and every- 
thing he can find. Sometimes the caddice finds a little 
shell with a live creature in it ; but that makes no differ- 
ence, on it goes with the rest of the things to help form 
the case. All these are fastened together with strong 
silk, for the caddice can spin like a caterpillar, and thus 
makes a very nice covering indeed, in which he lives 
secure. He moves freely about with it, however, as a 
snail does with .its shell, keeping his head out at one of 
the open ends, ready to seize his prey. Besides living 
on other insects, the caddice eats water-plants as well ; 
thus he gets along very comfortably in the midst of 
plenty, and well protected with his curious case. 

But like all the water-sprites, the caddice feels that 
he cannot live there forever. He, too, must visit the 
strange air-world, and take a merry flight in the sun- 
shine before his life ends ; so he does a strange thing, 
unlike the proceedings of all his kin. Most of them just 
push off their outer skin when they are ready to change, 
and there they are, perfect insects ; unlike the flower- 
fairies, who undergo such an entire change of body when 



104 Little People. 

they lose their caterpillar-shape, that they need a long 
sleep in the form of a chrysalis while it is taking place. 
The caddices seem to have a good many odd ideas, for 
they have copied the butterflies and some of the beetles 
in this fashion of passing the critical part of their lives 
in sleep, though, being such very different insects, they 
cannot make chrysalids. When the caddice feels the 
change coming, he first withdraws entirely into the shell 
he has built, then he proceeds to secure the open ends 
with silk. He does not seal them up tight, but makes 
little gratings, so that water may pass through, for he 
cannot live without it until after his change ; but he 
does not wish, of course, to go to sleep with his front 
and back doors wide open, for anybody to walk in that 
takes a fancy to explore the building, or perhaps have a 
mouthful of caddice for supper. The caddice has plenty 
of such neighbors, so he carefully fastens both doors, 
and then settles down for a nap. When he at length 
wakes up, he crawls slowly out of the case in which he 
has lived so long, and goes out into the great world for 
the first time. Now, like the dragon-fly, he creeps up 
the plant that grows out of the water, until he gains the 



The Water- Sprites. 105 

air, and then climbs out of his skin, and dries his wings. 
Then, leaving the old skin behind him, looking almost 
as if the grub itself were standing there, away skims the 
caddice-fly with his friends the Ephemera. 

But the water-sprites have a few relations that have 
taken to the dry land, not only in their winged state, 
but as grubs as well. These are generally to be found 
in hot climates; but as one queer little sprite lives in 
our country, some of you may be acquainted with him. 
This is the ant-lion, and, as he is rarely seen in the 
cold North, you must go to the warm Carolinas to 
find him. You will be surprised, considering his rela- 
tionship to the water-sprites, to find the ant-lion liv- 
ing in the dry, hot sand, which would horrify the 
" maidens of the water ; " but he is just as fierce and 
blood-thirsty as the dragon-flies, and as crafty as they 
are in catching his prey. He has no mask, but he digs 
a little hollow in the sand, scooping it out till he has a 
round smooth pit, with slanting sides, like a little basin ; 
and at the bottom of this he lurks, throwing a little 
loose sand over his body, so you would hardly think 
that anything was there. There he stays, perfectly 



106 Little People. 

quiet, as if he had gone to sleep under the sand. Pres- 
ently a little ant comes along, and looks over the edge 
of the pit, Ants are always inquisitive, and this one 
stops to consider what this strange hollow may be, and 
whether that object at the bottom is anything worth 
having. Little she knows what danger she is in as she 
stands debating, but, as she is a cautious creature on the 
whole, she guesses that danger may lurk in that smooth 
pit and turns to leave the treacherous brink. Alas ! 
danger is nearer than she supposes. Up jumps the 
creature at the bottom like a Jack-in-the-box, a shower of 
sand is thrown into the air, and the grains, rolling back 
down the sloping sides of the pit, carry the poor little 
ant with them, into the very jaws of the hungry ant-lion. 
So we see the family traits coming out, and are re- 
minded of the deceitful, masked dragon-grub, looking 
so innocent and harmless to hide his cruelty. 

These ant-lions are well known to Southern children, 
who call them " doodles. " They say they can always 
bring a "doodle" from his lair by calling his name 
softly, with lips close to the pit ; and he will answer at 
once by walking out. Perhaps he thinks an ant is 



The Water -Sprites. 107 

there when he feels the grains of sand disturbed, but 
the children say the doodle knows his name. 

Of course it is only as a grub that he enjoys this 
sandy existence : when he grows up he has beautiful 
long, narrow wings, with which he can fly about in the 
air (Fig. 3, page 91 ; the grub may be seen at Fig. 2). 

The water-sprites have one more set of relations 
that are even more unlike them than the ant-lion. In- 
deed, most people think they belong to quite a different 
family, for they have imitated the ants so closely that 
the Termites of the hot countries have almost been 
adopted into the ant family and are generally known 
by their name. But, though often called white ants, the 
termites are not ants at all, and have nothing whatever 
to do with them, but belong to the same family as the 
fierce dragon-fly and crafty ant-lion. We can only 
wonder, therefore, when we see how much they resem- 
ble the wise little ants we know so well, at Queen Nat- 
ure's patience in teaching two entirely different sets of 
her little subjects the very same lessons. 

To begin with, the termites live together in crowds, 
just as ants do, and build large hills ; but these are cer- 



108 Little People. 

tainly not much like the little ant-hills we are familiar 
with, and we can hardly believe them to be the work of 
insects. The hills are often ten or twelve feet high, 
and that is about twice as tall as a man ; while the 
earth they are built of is packed so tight, and baked so 
hard in the sun, that a man could climb up the smooth 
mound and stand on the top, without danger of break- 
ing through. But if he should break through, he 
would be in a sad plight ; for this termite-hill is well de- 
fended by brave soldiers, whose sharp jaws can sting 
terribly, and everyone would rush to defend their 
queen. She lies in the centre of the great hill ; an im- 
mense creature compared to the little ones all about 
her, for her body is full three inches long, and her six 
little legs cannot possibly carry her about. Of course 
she must be taken care of by the others, so the workers, 
who are a little smaller than the soldiers, and have no 
terrible pincers, take care of her and the hundreds of 
eggs she lays. After a while, young termites will hatch 
from these eggs ; and the queen lays so many that it is 
no wonder even this huge hill is often crowded, and 
new ones must be built all around. 



The Water- Sprites. 109 

Now I must tell you something about the worker ter- 
mites that will surprise you ; for you will think that such 
tiny creatures, who have no tools, must at least be able 
to see wonderfully well before they can do their work. 
As a fact, however, all the termites are blind, and live 
and labor entirely in the dark; raising their enormous 
hills, fighting their enemies, caring for the queen, and 
raising her little ones, without an eye in the whole 
colony. 

Still, you may say, they are no doubt quite at home 
in the halls and galleries of their wonderful hills, so 
they can find their way about easily in the dark. Ah, 
but there are termites who, while their numbers are too 
few to start a hill colony, take long journeys ; and live in 
the wood-work of houses, tunnelling through the walls, 
and making rooms and galleries with mud that they 
carry in from outside ! We are not likely to see any of 
these wonderful creatures unless we travel through the 
w r ild country of Africa, or into some parts of Asia, 
where they live ; and there we might hear stories about 
them that would make us shy about cultivating their ac- 
quaintance. It would not be pleasant to have such 



no Little People. 

creatures come into our houses and make holes in the 
doors and furniture, but that is a small thing compared 
to the mischief they really do. When they get into a 
wooden house in great numbers, they take possession 
of the floors and beams, gnawing and tunnelling away 
as they would in the earth, and have been known to 
bring the whole building down in ruins upon them ! # 
No wonder people dread the termites' visits, at least 
those whose houses are of a kind to be spoiled. The 
African savages, whose little huts cannot be injured by 
them, find them very nice indeed as an article of food ; 
and these, you will remember, are the same people who 
like boiled grasshoppers so much. The termites, how- 
ever, are not so easy to get, for the savages, who wear 
very little clothing, are a good deal afraid of their 
stings, as well they may be ; but they are so fond of ter- 
mites, boiled or baked in cakes, that they will often run 
the risk of being bitten for the sake of getting a good 
supply for dinner. 

After all this, I fear you may still be saying, " How 
can these termites be any relation to the winged 
dragon-flies ? " Perhaps the king-termes (Fig. 5, 









The Water- Sprites. in 

page 92) might help us with a little information on this 
point, for he has four clear wings ; small, it is true, but 
still enough like those of the dragon-fly to prove that 
he belongs to that family. The queen also has wings 
at first, but loses them very soon, as they would be of 
no use to her after she has grown so large; while the 
workers and soldiers never have any. They get along 
very well, however, on their six active little feet ; being 
strong and brave, like all their family. 

So we find the nerve-winged * insects, as they are 
called, all over the world, and everywhere they are 
powerful and flourishing. We have seen them in the 
water, in the air, and on the earth ; sometimes leading 
solitary, prowling lives, sometimes herding together to 
help each other, and there seem to be few ways of 
living that they have not tried. Many of them spend 
the greater part of their existence as creeping grubs ; 
sometimes living in the sand, but oftener in the wa- 
ter; swimming freely about, like the dragons, or 
housed in snug cases, like the caddices, or hiding 
under pebbles, like the young of the stone-fly (which 

* Neuroptera. 



112 



Little People. 



is shown, when full grown, at Fig. i, page 91), and 
others. None of them injure our plants and vegeta- 
bles, but live entirely on other insects ; so we may 
consider them all our friends, though the bugs, flies, and 
mosquitoes that they devour no doubt regard them in 
quite a different light. Which of the Little People 
are more wonderful than the Water-sprites and their 
relations ? 




CHAPTER V. 



THE TROUBLESOME MIDGETS. 

WfN fairyland, you know, there are always to be 

found mischievous little elves 
whole delight is in teas- 
r. They tease 
the other fairies, 
they tease 
the animals, 
and above all 
do they like to 
;e us mortals, 
y all sorts of 
tricks upon us. You 
lave often heard of the 
pranks of Puck and other 
queer sprites, that turn the milk 
sour, and stretch threads across the path, and prick 
sleepy people with thorns, or pinch them black and 




ii4 Little People. 

blue. These little elves were really quite troublesome 
in Europe at one time, but I think that in our own 
country we have midgets quite as annoying. They 
seem to take a mischievous pleasure in tormenting us, 
waking us from summer naps, singing suddenly in our 
ears, or pricking us with their tiny daggers. Some of 
them come about in the hot day-time, others prefer to 
hover around in the real fairy-hours, after dark ; but 
nearly all manage to annoy us in some way or another, 
unless they prefer to torment animals, which a few of 
them find a favorite occupation. We all know these 
mischievous Little People pretty well, and have had 
many an attack from them ; but many people know very 
little about the way they live and the curious things 
some of them do when not busy teasing us. 

Certainly the most familiar of all these troublesome 
midgets, perhaps of all the Little People, is the com- 
mon house-fly. It is known to everybody. We have 
all chased it with duster or fan, we have all been teased 
by its persistent attentions, we have all wondered 
where it went to when cold weather came, and I am 
sure we have all helped it carefully out of the milk-jug, 



The Troublesome Midgets. 115 

or tended it in a warm place when we found it chilled 
by autumn blasts, just as if it hadn't worried us all sum- " 
mer long. 

After all, the house-fly does earn its living, and we 
really should not grudge it a few sips of milk, sugar, 
and the other dainties it likes, considering how little it 
takes; but the trouble is that flies, like other misfort- 
unes, do not come singly. We may be willing to en- 
tertain one or two at our tables, but a thousand do 
seem rather too much, and so we do all we can to keep 
them out of the house. Yet the flies, for all their teas- 
ing, do a little good in the world ; and their work is 
very like that of the scavenger beetles. 

By this time you will be prepared to hear that the 
fly once looked and lived very differently from his pres- 
ent fashion, as nearly all the Little People have been 
distinguishing themselves by such strange transforma- 
tions. Well, when the fly came out of the cgg } he was 
a tiny white maggot, like a wee grub or worm, without 
any feet. He could not walk, therefore, but only wrig- 
gle about ; however, he had no occasion to move very 
far, so feet would have been an unnecessary luxury. 



n6 Little People. 

His birthplace was not a pleasant one, for the mother 
fly had taken care to lay her eggs in the dirtiest place 
she could find, knowing well that that was what her 
young maggots would like best ; for though it seems 
very disagreeable to us, these creatures live and feed in 
any decaying matter. But there is no doubt that they 
do good in destroying these things, and so purifying 
the air ; though, as they are so small, they cannot 
really help us as much as the scavenger beetles do. 

After they have spent a few weeks in this way, they 
put on a hard brown suit, and are then in a state an- 
swering to the chrysalis stage of the butterfly's life ; but 
this does not last very long. They soon break through 
the hard skin, and come out with legs and wings, and a 
little proboscis for sucking liquids ; and, as perfect flies, 
go buzzing into the air. 

And now you must notice a strange thing about all 
these flies, though you may not think of it at first. 
They have only two wings. All the other Little Peo- 
ple have four, so the flies and their relations are called 
two-winged insects.* Perhaps you will say the beetle 

* Diptera. 



The Troublesome Midgets. 117 

has only two wings under his hard shell, and neither is 
the grasshopper any better off; but you forget that the 
beetle's shell, and the grasshoppers rough parchment 
casings, are in fact wing-covers, and take the place of 
the upper pair of wings. The flies have nothing of the 
sort, but sometimes you may see, if you look closely at 
a large one, that he has two little points just behind his 
wings. These are really his second pair, which in all 
his kind never grow larger than these little bits ; and 
the upper pair, that have turned into hard elytra for the 
beetles and stiff sheaths for the grasshoppers, are the 
only wings the fly has at all. But he well knows how 
to use them ! The swift dragons of the marsh can 
hardly move their four wings faster than the fly moves 
his two, though they are so much larger that a few 
strokes will carry them through the air much more 
rapidly. Yet the fly's powers of motion are not to be 
despised ; and when he seems to be standing still in 
mid-air, we watch his little wings, marvelling at the whir- 
ring which almost renders them invisible. When he is 
walking quietly about we can see how pretty those 
wings really are, with their rainbow colors ; but it is 



n8 Little People. 

hard to believe that these shining tints are caused by 
the tiniest invisible hairs that cover the whole wing, 
hairs so tiny that they cannot possibly be seen except 
through the most powerful microscope. 

The fly, in spite of the fact that he was not taught 
habits of strict cleanliness in his youth, is very neat 
after he grows up. He makes his toilet as carefully as 
a cat does, and has something of a cat's dislike to get- 
ting wet. See him polish those shining wings, rubbing 
them down with his two hind-legs to cleanse them from 
any particles of dust ; then the hind-legs themselves are 
rubbed and twisted together, then the fore-legs, and 
then he scrubs his face so energetically that we wonder 
he does not twist his head off, considering what a slen- 
der neck supports it. His eyes are very large, so large 
that they seem to make up the greater part of his head, 
and to stand out on each side like bay-windows. They 
really are like windows with hundreds of panes, for 
each eye is made up of many little eyes, which are all 
well able to see, so our fly is very well provided in that 
respect. Fig. 4, page 129, shows a little piece of the 
fly's eye, greatly magnified. 






The Troublesome Midgets. 119 

If you have a microscope, or a chance to look 
through one belonging to somebody else, nothing is 
more interesting than a peep at the different parts of 
the fly's wonderful little body. His many-windowed 
eyes, his delicate wings, his curious hairy legs and 
hooked feet, are all worth seeing. You may imagine, 
perhaps, that his feet are made in a very peculiar way 
to enable him to cling and crawl upon ceilings and slip- 
pery window-panes, and so they are. He is provided 
with feet that remind one of the old-fashioned ball-and- 
claw ornaments on furniture ; and if you have ever seen 
any such old chairs and tables, with each leg ending in 
a claw clasping a ball, you will know at once what the 
fly's foot looks like under a microscope (Fig. 3, page 
129). Of course it is not pest like that, but there is a 
tiny ball on each tiny foot, from which comes a sticky 
substance whenever it is pressed ; and which is the 
cause of many ugly little specks that tell us where the 
flies have been. So when the fly runs along, pressing 
his feet against the wall, this stickiness holds him firmly 
on the most slippery place he may choose for his prom- 
enade, yet does not hinder him from going quite swiftly 



»>/ 



120 Z////^ People. 

when he wishes. However, when the fly is really in 
a hurry, he depends on his wings. 

Flies are generally hungry and thirsty, and never 
seem to get enough. How they flock about the sugar- 
bowl and the preserve-jar ! How they enjoy a plateful 
of cake or sweets ! And though sugar attracts them 
more than anything else, they are quite ready to dine 
with us on whatever we may happen to have, and par- 
take of every dish. If you watch one a moment instead 
of driving him away, you may see his little proboscis 
come out and plant itself firmly on the bit of sugar; 
and though it is too small to see, a wonderful little pump 
is working away inside of it, and sending the sweet 
fluid into the fly's throat. If the sugar is dry and hard, 
he will drop a little bit of liquid on it, to melt it, and 
then he can easily draw it up ; for a fly cannot take dry 
solids through his proboscis, and he often spies out 
moisture where none of us big people can see anything 
of the sort. Fig. A, page 113, shows the fly's head, 
magnified, but there is a still larger picture of the 
proboscis on page 129, Fig. 2. 

Most of the flies we see in the house are black, and 



The Troublesome Midgets. 121 

vary a good deal in size. But sometimes we find hand- 
some ones with bright, shining green bodies, and these 
we call blue-bottle flies. They live just as the common 
flies do when they are grown up, but when they were 
first hatched they lived on a piece of meat, where their 
mother had put her eggs. Of course a great many of 
these are destroyed, so we do not see so many blue- 
bottles as we do common house-flies. 

Now, while so many flies spend their larva-hood in 
decaying matter of all kinds, and so do a little good by 
consuming it, others do much real harm by living in the 
bodies of animals. The gad-fly and its relations have 
this curious habit. The mother gad-fly lays her eggs 
on a horse's fore-legs, and when he tries to take them off 
with his big tongue, the tiny maggots crawl right down 
his throat, and live within him till they are ready to 
turn into flies, and find a freer dwelling in the air. 
There are many kinds of these unpleasant flies, that 
sometimes kill the poor horses and cattle, and though 
they injure them in different ways, all have the extraor- 
dinary fancy of making a living animal their house. 

Other flies are troublesome only after they have 



I 



122 Little People. 

grown up, and then their stings are real pests to the 
poor horses. You must have seen the great horse-fly, 
which is black, with a whitish dust upon its body, and 
which teases the horses with its painful sting till they 
sometimes run away with the wagon to which they may 
be harnessed. The young ones do no harm, however, 
but live quietly in ditches and moist ground till they 
are ready to become winged flies. 

Now, the fly's sting is not a bit like the bee's sting. 
Bees, wasps, and all such insects, have their sharp 
weapon in their tails ; but the flies and their relations 
pierce with the proboscis, which among the moths and 
butterflies is such a harmless instrument for sucking 
their food. The two-winged insects use it for the same 
purpose ; but some of them can turn it into a painful 
weapon as well, because it contains a wonderful little 
set of lancets, and knives, and gimlets, enough to set up 
a whole fairy carpenter-bench ; as we can see under the 
microscope. What really hurts, though, is not the little 
hole . they make so much as the drop of poison that is 
hidden among these tools, and which comes out with 
them to enter the wound, and make it very painful. 



The Troublesome Midgets. 123 

While it takes a very big fly, with a very sharp sting, 
to make any impression on the thick skin of a horse, we 
ourselves are tormented by some much smaller and 
daintier insects, whose lives, on the whole, are pleasant- 
er than those we have been following. We must, in- 
stead of peering into dark or dirty places, go forth into 
the pure air again and seek some clear brook or shady 
pool ; and there among the flags and rushes, we may 
find floating some tiny fairy boats. They are so little 
we shall have hard work to find them, and when we do, 
you will say at once that they are the work of some of 
the Little People, for who else could build such wee 
crafts and set them afloat? Can you guess what they 
are ? Perhaps not, but little Mrs. Gnat could tell you, 
and if you understood her language, you might hear her 
shrill little voice in your ear — " Put that back, put it in 
the water again, quick ! That's not a boat, it's my 
eggs, and they won't hatch if you take them away from 
the water. Don't touch my eggs ! " Sure enough, the 
little boat is only a bunch of gnat's eggs, all glued to- 
gether in this queer shape, and left floating on the water 
by the careful mother. You may think it a queer way 



124 Little People. 

for her to take care of them, but she knows what they 
need better than you or I do, and is doing just the right 
thing for them when she launches the little boats on the 
stream. 

They float safely over the ripples for a while, and 
when the little gnats hatch out, in the form of tiny 
grubs, they swim about as freely as the fishes ; but they 
are not fitted, like them, for breathing in the water. 
They need air as much as you do ; and how do you sup- 
pose they get it while they live in the brook ? Well, 
when a diver goes beneath the waves, he puts on a rub- 
ber suit to which is fastened a long tube or pipe, con- 
necting with the air above, and through this he breathes. 
The baby gnat also has a hard, water-proof suit, and 
long, hollow tail, like the diver's tube ; and as he swims 
about he is careful to keep the end of this tube above 
the surface, so that air, and not water, may get into it. 

Thus the baby gnats get along very comfortably in 
their watery home, but unfortunately for us, they do not 
stay there. Like all other insects, they must change 
their form and way of living, and, at the risk of his life, 
the gnat proceeds to draw the legs and wings of his 




THE MIDGETS VICTIM. 



The Troublesome Midgets. 127 

new body out of the old skin. I say at the risk of 
his life, for it is a dangerous operation for him. After 
he leaves his old shape he cannot live in the water, and 
should the skin tip over before he has freed himself en- 
tirely from it, it would carry him down, to be drowned in 
the old home where he once swam so easily, and per- 
haps be snapped up by a hungry dragon-grub. This 
often happens ; but if he meets with no such accident, 
he soon dries his tiny wings, and darts away to join the 
swarms of " midges," or "no-see-'ems," as the Indians 
called them ; and of his right to this name he will soon 
convince us by his invisible attacks. 

But a more familiar tormentor still is the mosquito. 
None of you need a description of its narrow body, 
sharp proboscis, and shrill song ; but perhaps you do 
not know that Mrs. Mosquito alone is to blame for the 
suffering inflicted upon us, and that her husband never 
bites. As the "biting" is the mosquito's manner of 
feeding, the males cannot be expected to live very long, 
and they do not ; but all summer we are liable to the 
onslaughts of the mosquitoes that do bite, and that se- 
verely. It is no wonder that they hurt us, with the. set 



128 Little People. 

of poisoned lancets I mentioned, and which you may 
see with the naked eye, by squeezing the little insect's 
slender proboscis till they appear at the tip ; but a 
microscope will show you much more clearly how won- 
derful they are. In the picture on page 113 you may 
see this very clearly at B, while the baby mosquito, 
marked C, is just below. 

Like the gnats, the mosquitoes pass their infancy 
swimming in the water, and breathing through their 
tails. Their childhood is not a very long one ; for after 
living there about three weeks, they burst open their 
old skin on the surface of the water, and shoot out, 
grown-up mosquitoes, as if they had no time to lose. 

Mosquitoes are troublesome enough, but there is an- 
other insect that we regard with a still greater dislike, 
and destroy whenever we find it. This is the flea, 
which, though it has no wings, is considered a rela- 
tion of the flies because it is so much like them in man] 
ways. Disagreeable as the flea is, it is really a won- 
derful little creature, and we do not often think what 
amazing powers it has for leaping. We have already 
found many skilful jumpers among the Little People, but 



The Troublesome Midgets. 



129 



the flea certainly excels them all as an acrobat. It is no 
trouble for it to leap two hundred times its own length, 
and if you do not realize how remarkable that is, imag- 
ine a man six feet high who could do the same thing. 
To see a man jump twelve hundred feet in the air 
would attract crowds at once from all directions, yet 
the despised flea performs fully as wonderful a feat 
every time we see it, and it excites no comment be- 
yond an indignant exclamation at its escape. 

Thus the most despised and disliked insects are 
well worth studying, and though the two-winged in- 
sects cannot always tell us such marvellous stories as 
some of the other Little People, they are not without 
interest of their own. 







CHAPTER VI. 

THE WISEST OF THE LITTLE 
PEOPLE* 



lready, v^/ m our journeyings 
(^ through fairy-land, we have 
found many strange 
things. But some of 
the Little People can 
-1--V, . - tell us more 
w -f* wonderful stories 
than any we have yet 
read, and we some- 
times can scarcely 
believe that what 
we see is the work 
of feeble insects. 

* Hymenoptera. 










The Wisest of the Little People. 131 

We will not look at once into the homes of the very 
wisest Little People, but turn our attention first to the 
sprites that have played such tricks with the sober old 
oak-tree here, and with other trees and plants as well. 

Most children who live in the country — where chil- 
dren rightfully belong — know well the many playthings 
that the queen of the fairies, who is also the friend of 
the children, has provided for them at every turn. 
Playthings grow on trees, and may be had for the 
gathering; as every child knows who has collected 
horse-chestnuts, acorns, and oak-balls, to the wonder of 
the stupid grown-up people, who could not understand 
the worth of such treasures. The oak-balls are quite 
unlike the acorns, which are the natural fruit of the tree, 
but perhaps you never knew that these smooth, round 
balls, that look so much like marbles, were produced by 
the magic of one of the Little People. Let us try to 
find the fairy that wields the magic wand. 

Here she is, a gauzy-winged, brisk little elf, with a 
slender waist and a long wand, and though she is very 
little indeed, she has all the energy peculiar to her race. 
We find her humming about the oak-leaves, and won- 



132 Little People, 

der what attracts her there, where no flower grows ; 
but she is not looking for food. At last she pierces the 
bark with her long hair-like wand, and flies away ; but 
in a few days the magic influence will show itself in the 
brown ball that grows upon the twig, where no ball 
ever grew before, or ever could till Madam Cynips 
began to exert her power over it. 

Now, if we take this ball and cut it in two, we shall 
see that it was not from mischief that she caused it to 
grow there. It is really a cradle for her little ones, a 
nest for the eggs she has laid there, and when we have 
divided it we shall see the helpless infants curled up in 
the middle, and looking like tiny white worms. 

Well, this does seem to be a hard, dry, dark sort of 
a place to be brought up in, and reminds us of the sug- 
gestion that lively boys should be kept in barrels until 
their education is finished. The gall- wasps seem to 
have tried this plan very successfully with their chil- 
dren, for after they are packed away in these balls they 
give no further trouble, and are well sheltered and fed 
therein. The inside of the ball is, we see, dry and 
crumbly, rather like cork. This supplies the baby gall- 



The Wisest of the Little People, 133 

wasps with food, though it looks so dry and tasteless ; 
and they have nothing to do but eat their way out. 

Now I think, when you see the rosy bladders raised 
on willow-leaves, the prickly swellings on rose-bushes, 
and the many strange things that plants bear besides 
their rightful fruit, that you will know they are caused 
by these queer little fays. One of the prickly balls is 
shown in the picture on page 182, while in the lower 
right-hand corner you may see how it looks inside. 

When you see the great Tremex on the trunk of a 
tree, you may be afraid of her, for she is much larger 
than the little gall-wasps, and with a fearful spear sev- 
eral inches long. Yet she is quite harmless, and if you 
never saw her, I advise you to make her acquaintance 
at the earliest opportunity. The Tremex is among the 
largest of this particular class of Little People, and 
looks a little like a big wasp. She does not cause galls 
to grow on trees, but with her long spear she slowly 
drills a hole right into the trunk of some old tree, and 
there lays her eggs. Then she flies away — if she can, 
for not seldom the long spear becomes so firmly fixed 
in the tree that she cannot draw it out again, and there 



134 Little People. 

she is held a prisoner till she dies. But the babies live 
securely in the solid wood of the tree, without any mark 
to show their presence there. 

There are other little mothers that are just as anx- 
ious to provide homes for their children, but have not 
the magic wand of the gall-wasps, that can raise up a 
home from a bare twig by a touch ; for all fairies are not 
equally gifted, you know. 

The Sphexes are pretty wasps, with very slender 
waists, and are often clad in bright, steely blue from 
head to foot, and carry a sharp sting. You have prob- 
ably often seen them, but may not know what wonder- 
ful little masons they are, unless you have seen one 
come right into your room and begin her house in the 
corner, before your very eyes. She will not be much 
afraid of you, if you do not get too near and interfere 
with her work, or try to frighten her ; but just keep a 
respectful distance and watch her, and you will see 
strange things. 

Having once fixed upon a spot, Mrs. Mud-wasp 
begins her house ; and as she has to bring all her ma- 
terials from out doors, and fly through the window with 




THE DIGGER-WASP. 



The Wisest of the Little People. 137 

just a little at a time, we wonder that she has the cour- 
age to begin, or the patience to finish such a piece of 
work. And what does she use to build her house ? 
Mud — just mud — which gives her the name of mud- wasp. 
You may think that is very poor building material, but 
in Mexico and some far away parts of our own country, 
besides many places in the Old World, houses and 
whole cities are built of mud, which hardens in the sun, 
and shelters many families. They call it adobe, and 
travellers look upon the houses made of it with great 
curiosity ; but they might see many such houses at 
home, only much smaller. 

Such a house our little blue mud-wasp is building. 
She comes in the window with her load — a bit of mud 
— and placing it on the wall, smooths and pats it with 
her mouth and feet till she has laid a nice foundation, 
and then she goes out again for more. As she must go 
to the garden and scrape her load together, it takes her 
several minutes, but she comes flying back without 
much appearance of hurry, and plasters it on to 
strengthen the foundation. When three or four trips 
have been made, you can see quite a little patch on the 



138 Little People. 

wall, but unless the house is to be a very small one in- 
deed, you think it will take the little builder a long while 
to finish it. So it will, but she does not waste any 
time, scarcely even stops to rest ; but keeps coming and 
going, putting layer after layer of mud on her founda- 
tion, and gradually building up a nice little room. 

Where are the doors and windows ? you ask. 

Well, the door opens from the inside, and windows 
are not needed yet ; but the wasp has been working sev- 
eral hours now, and you have not watched her all the 
time, or you might know what is walled up in that 
room. Mother wasp has laid an egg in there, and now 
we know what she has been working for. The house 
is not for herself, but for her children, and she does 
all she can to make it comfortable for them. When 
they come out of the eggs, they will be hungry, she 
knows, so she must provide food for them beforehand ; 
and leaving her task of building for a moment, she goes 
a-hunting. 

If she goes out of the house, plenty of game is to 
be had — grasshoppers, spiders, big flies, and other 
dainty morsels- — which she will stab with her poisoned 



The Wisest of the Little People. 139 

dagger and carry home in triumph. But she does not 
like to get anything very heavy, if she has a long way 
to travel. It is quite possible that she will find some- 
thing in the house — a fly or spider, or perhaps a cock- 
roach — which we shall be very ready to let her have. 
Now see what she does. 

She pounces on the cockroach, but does not kill him 
then and there, that is not her plan. Seizing him by 
the feeler or fore-leg she pulls him along, making him 
follow her toward the nest. The poor cockroach feels 
as if he were in an ogre's clutches, and very much ob- 
jects to going to the castle, there to be killed and eaten ; 
but it is of no use ; the wasp is the stronger, and he 
can't resist. She leads him across the floor and up the 
wall, and, much against his will, he is forced into the 
house, where she paralyzes him with one stroke, and 
he is walled up with the egg ! 

After this, Mother Mud-wasp goes on building more 
rooms, and putting an egg in each one, with some pro- 
vision for the little wasp when it is hatched ; and so her 
house is built and stored, after days of labor. Then 
the mother disappears, and you will see her no more. 



140 Little People. 

But you still watch the little adobe house on the wall, 
hoping to see the young wasps come out when they are 
old enough ; and by and by you are rewarded by seeing 
a neat, round hole drilled in its side. Young Mud- wasp 
has indeed come out, and left the door open behind him, 
as he will fly away into the world, never to return. 
The others come out one by one, and perhaps you will 
be fortunate enough to see some of them ; but they have 
a trick of slipping out slyly, and getting away when no 
one is there to see. 

It is a bright spring day, and the air is full of life ; 
let us go into the garden, and see if we cannot find some 
more Sphexes. A flat, earthy place is where the Digger- 
wasps will most probably be, for they, too, make dwell- 
ings of mud, though they do not take the trouble to 
carry it away, and build it carefully into a house with 
rooms. This is how the digger-wasp goes to work. 

She looks something like her cousin the mud- wasp, 
but her legs are well-fitted for digging, and the house 
she makes is but a hole in the ground, like the field- 
cricket's. She chooses a nice smooth place, and begins 
to dig, scratching the earth up with her fore-feet, then 



The Wisest of the Little People. 141 

turning around and kicking it with her hind ones, work- 
ing away till she has made quite a hole. It is not very 
easy work, after the space is deep enough for her to 
get into, and she has to kick pretty hard to get the 
earth out ; but she is not daunted, and paws away like 
a dog digging up a bone. When the hole is deep 
enough she lays an egg in the bottom, and flies away 
for food, just as the mud-wasp did. Like the mud-wasp, 
too, if she can save herself the trouble of carrying her 
victims, she will make them walk to meet their doom ; 
and when all is ready, she will fill up the hole and pat 
the earth over it so nicely that no enemy can find the 
place where her treasure is hidden. 

But she is not always safe from one enemy, and one 
of her own kind too, for it is an insect something like 
the gall-wasp. It has no sting, but only a long piercer 
like the Cynips, and I should have described it before 
the true wasps were I taking them in their exact order. 
But I think you will understand their ways better now 
that you know the Sphexes, for the life of these ichneu- 
mon-wasps is often connected with that of the true 
wasp. When you hear what it does, see if it does not 



142 Little People. 

remind you of the English cuckoo, or our own cow-bird, 
in the lazy coolness with which it takes advantage of its 
neighbors' industry. 

When the digger-wasp has gone to find some tooth- 
some grasshopper or fat cricket for her little one's fut- 
ure repasts, the ichneumon-wasp comes along. She 
looks so much like a real wasp that you may be afraid 
to touch her, but, as I said, she cannot sting you. Her 
long feelers, or antenncz, are constantly quivering, and 
you may know her kind by that peculiarity. As soon 
as she sees the wasp-hole, with the egg at the bottom 
of it, in she goes as if it belonged to her, and lays 
another little egg close to the first ; then she flies 
away. 

The digger-wasp does not notice the new egg on 
her return, for it is very small, and so goes on and fin- 
ishes her work, little thinking it is all in vain ! 

Now when those eggs hatch into little grubs, there 
is a terrible time in that hole ! For the young ichneu- 
mon has a taste for wasp-grubs as well as grasshoppers 
and crickets, and he first eats up the rightful owner of 
the dwelling, and then finishes the provisions that the 



The Wisest of the Little People. 143 

careful mother has placed there for her own young 
one. Then the thievish ichneumon, instead of the in- 
dustrious digger-wasp, comes out of the ground and 
flies away. 

Unfortunately for the other Little People, this lazy 
ichneumon-wasp has a great many relations, some larger 
than himself, some much smaller ; but all given to tres- 
passing on their neighbors' premises, or, for that matter, 
on their neighbors themselves. Some like to live in 
the bodies of caterpillars, as many a young naturalist 
knows to his sorrow. It is very disappointing when 
one has secured a fine large Sphinx caterpillar, and is 
filled with pleasant anticipations of the beautiful moth it 
will become, to see it gradually droop and pine, lose its 
appetite, and waste away. What can be the matter ? 
The anxious young naturalist offers the melancholy 
caterpillar every kind of leaf he can think of, gives it 
fresh air, and puts fresh earth in the box. All in vain. 
The caterpillar soon presents a very curious appearance, 
being covered with tiny white things like very small 
grains of wheat, standing on end as if growing from the 
skin. It will do no good to brush these off, the mis- 



144 Little People. 

chief has already been done, and the poor caterpillar 
shrivels up and dies, while from each white grain, which 
is really a tiny cocoon, comes a shining little green 
creature like a fly, but with four wings instead of two, 
and quivering antennae. By this token we know that 

the caterpillar has been afflicted with a swarm of ichneu- 

* 

mon-wasps that have spent their grub life feeding on 
the fat of his body, and pushing their cocoons through 
his skin when ready to make their change. 

These are very little ones. A larger ichneumon- 
wasp, the size of a hornet, will lay but one egg in a 
caterpillar — though how she knows no other ichneumon 
has been there before her, is something we cannot un- 
derstand. Now if you find one of the pretty Asterias 
caterpillars, that are often afflicted in this way, you will 
not see the strange growth of little cocoons on its back, 
because only one ichneumon-wasp is living inside it ; 
but the caterpillar will form its chrysalis just the same, 
and you will expect to see a butterfly come out of it 
Alas ! no butterfly will ever appear, but a buzzing, 
gauzy-winged, wasp-like insect, with trembling antennae, 
will come forth, leaving a round hole in the side of the 



The Wisest of the Little People. 145 

chrysalis, and then you will know for the first time that 
the caterpillar was a victim of the ichneumon-wasp. 

So each of these Little People provides for its chil- 
dren in a different way ; but, so far, none of them have 
had anything to do with the little ones after they are 
hatched. They have not learned to make houses large 
enough for whole families to live and move about in, and 
it is among the more warlike creatures, with sharp 
stings, that we must look for this intelligence. We find 
it first in the paper-making wasps, whose nests you 
must have seen. Do you know those little gray homes, 
like dry honey-comb in appearance, that hang, cells 
downward, under eaves, or in barns and unused rooms ? 
We begin to see, in the shape of the nest, some like- 
ness to the waxen comb of the wise bees ; but this is 
built out of paper, and contains no honey. 

Where do they get the paper ? 

Oh, they make it. The wasp flies to a piece of 
wood that strikes her fancy, and begins to scratch and 
bite at it till she has separated some tiny fibres. These 
she chews to a pulp, and, when it is quite soft, makes it 
the corner-stone of her house, and goes for more, like 



146 Little People. 

the mud-wasp with her simpler material. But this is 
very slow work for one wasp, and it takes her a long 
while to build even a few rooms, in which she lays her 
eggs, and keeps right on building, instead of flying 
away as if her work was finished. 

When the little ones hatch, she has as much to do 
as any mother bird, catching flies and spiders for the 
hungry grubs, and sometimes bits of meat from the 
butcher's. Poor thing ! She is quite tired out by the 
time the grubs have turned into full-grown wasps like 
herself, but now she has some one to help her. More 
eggs have been laid, and more grubs are hatching, 
and the elder ones busy themselves at once about the 
household tasks, feeding their little brothers and sis- 
ters, and helping with the work of building, so the nest, 
if nobody disturbs it, will grow to be quite large. 

Each little grub lives in a room of its own, hanging 
downward from the ceiling, which seems a very strange 
way for a baby to behave ; but they are secured so they 
cannot fall out, and if the nest were turned the other 
side up, the rain would fill up the cells as soon as they 
were unsealed to let out the wasps. 



The Wisest of the Little People. 147 

But these little nests that I have described, because 
they are familiar to most of us, are nothing to the great 
round ones that we sometimes find on a tree in the 
country, where they have not been disturbed for a long 
time. These nests are generally pear-shaped, and the 
front door is at the very bottom. There the hornets go 
in, and have a fine large house in which to live. But 
there is a feud of long standing- between hornets and 
country boys. The minute a boy sees a hornet's nest, 
he must have it, at any cost, and when the hornets see 
him coming they probably buzz to each other, " Oh, 
here comes one of those horrible boys ! Let us get our 
stings all ready for the cruel, destroying monster ! " 
So the boy and the hornets both prepare themselves for 
battle, and they generally have one. Sometimes the 
hornets get the best of it, and sting the boy away ; but 
often he manages to bring down the nest by throwing 
sticks at it, and then the angry hornets will have to 
leave it. Woe to that boy if they catch him then ! 

We must pass over the other wasps, and the troub- 
lesome little fruit-eating " yellow-jackets, " that most 
children know but too well, and turn our attention to a 



148 Little People. 

great and intelligent family that has filled the wisest 
men with wonder, and which some think are the most 
marvellous of all the Little People. 

" Buzz, buzz z ! " What a drowsy sound it # is on a 
hot summer afternoon when we lazy big people are only 
trying to get cool, leaving all activity to the untiring 
Little People ! But the sleepy hum does not mean 
drowsiness on the part of the hummer; no indeed! 
There, the sound has stopped, proving that the quick 
wings are still, and if we take the trouble to look about 
us, we may see the bee they belong to, in a vine grow- 
ing over the porch, or on a bush near the window. 
Now what does the bee want with those leaves ? you 
say ; there are no flowers there, and no honey. Very 
true, but we may be sure the bee knows what she is 
about. Now she grasps the edge of a leaf with her 
six legs, and moving her sharp jaws — what, is she 
eating it? No, she is cutting it as neatly as you could 
do with a pair of scissors ; and you would have to take 
some pains before you could cut out such an even round 
piece as the bee has severed from the leaf. She flies 
away with her prize, and if we examine the edges of 



The Wisest of the Little People. 149 

the place it came from, we are surprised to see how 
straight and smooth they are, and know that the thief 
is the wonderful Leaf-cutter Bee. It is not her first 
visit to the bush, for many of the leaves have round 
pieces cut out of them, where either she or others like 
her have been at work ; but what do these bees want of 
the leaves they are carrying off piecemeal ? Well, next 
time one comes, we will follow her home, and find out 
what she does with them. 

Here she is again ! snipping away with her busy 
scissors ; and away she flies, so fast that we must has- 
ten, or she will escape us altogether. But she does not 
go very far. An old stump, or a neglected fence, will 
probably be the place she is flying to ; and, sure enough, 
she alights on a broken fence-rail, and disappears, leaf 
and all, in a hole bored into the wood. 

Now, do you know why she took the leaf? Well, 
though this bee lives in such a very simple home, a 
mere hole she has made in the decayed wood, she is 
not ready to dispense with all luxuries. She lines her 
home with these leaves, and they form wall-paper, 
carpets, upholstery, and even cradles ; for she uses them 



150 Little People. 

to " wrap her baby bunting in," and its food besides, 
in little parcels. She is a neat housekeeper, and 
seems to be thinking, " No one shall say that I can't 
keep my house in order, though I may not live in a fine 
hive like the honey-bees ; or that I leave bee-bread 
lying about the floor, or let the babies tumble out the 
windows." So she wraps up the bee-bread in leaves, 
and the babies likewise ; and if we are curious enough to 
explore her home with a stick, we may fish up various 
queer things — baby bees, which are fat, white grubs, 
and the packages of bee-bread, which we shall think 
does not smell good at all, but everyone to his taste. 
Bee-bread is made out of pollen, the yellow dust in 
flowers, from a very old receipt handed down for many 
generations of bees, for their babies cannot eat anything 
else. 

But now, if we are wise, we will put these things 
back in the hole again, and leave mother bee to arrange 
them there ; for if she comes back and finds us meddling 
she will be very angry, and it will do no good to tell 
her it is all in the interest of science. If we could cut 
the bee-house straight across instead of poking at it 



The Wisest of the Little People. 151 

with a stick, we should find it divided into rooms, or 
cells, in each of which is a baby bee, with food within 
reach, all prettily upholstered in leaves. It does not 
look a bit like honey-comb, but all the bees build cells ; 
if not in combs, then in rows, like this one. 

Here comes a big bumble-bee buzzing along. You 
know her well — big, noisy, clumsy creature that she is, 
and though she is sometimes called "humble," I do 
not think she deserves the name. She lives in the 
meadow yonder, and a queer kind of home she has. 
The gall-wasps barrel up their children in solid wooden 
balls, but the bumble-bees keep theirs in jars, which 
does seem a peculiar idea ; and bees, grubs, honey, 
and all, form a rather disorderly and happy-go-lucky 
household, down in some grassy hollow. 

The honey-bees do not associate at all with their 
easy-going cousins the bumble-bees, and we can imag- 
ine, when we know their orderly ways better, how 
shocking such careless housekeeping must seem to 
them. The bumbles no doubt hold the honey-bees 
in equal contempt, as is generally the way, and think 
them absurdly particular and fussy. 



152 Little People. 

" What, have we not a queen and workers ? " say 
the bumble-bees. " Do we not make honey ? Then, 
why are we not as good as those conceited creatures in 
the hive yonder, who for ages have been held up as 
models of industry ? Don't we work, too ? " 

It is true that the bumble-bees have a queen, who is 
the mother of the household as well, and it is partly her 
fault if they do not keep in better order. She usually 
rents some old field-mouse hole in the spring, instead of 
building a house herself, and collects pollen and honey 
for the little ones ; but after these grow up she stays at 
home most of the time and takes care of matters there, 
while the worker-bees, which are smaller females that 
do not lay eggs, fly out in search of honey. This is 
stored in little brown jars, which take the place of cells, 
and which also serve as cradles. The queen goes on 
laying eggs, so that more grubs keep hatching all the 
time, and turning into full-grown bees, after taking a 
nap sealed up in their jars ; when they are said to be in 
the pupa state, and that is the same as the chrysalis 
stage of the butterfly's life. Thus the colony grows ; 
and perhaps you will find one some day in the country, 



The Wisest of the Little People. 153 

but I hope you will not stumble upon it too suddenly, 
as the mowers sometimes do, or you may find that 
bumble-bees' stings, though not so sharp as those of 
the wasps and hornets, are very uncomfortable to 
feel. 

Country children like bumble-bees' honey, if they 
can get it without being stung ; but it is brown and 
coarse, and not much like the nice clear honey, so beau- 
tifully packed in waxen combs, that is made in the 
hive. 

What a fuss the bumble makes about getting that 
honey, to be sure ! Did you ever notice one busy 
about the flowers ? How she buzzes, and tumbles 
about the deep cups, and very often, instead of going 
around properly by the front entrance, bites a great 
hole in the flower, near the stem, and takes out the 
honey that way. 

Now, this is not fair at all, for there is a regular 
agreement between the flowers and bees, and Mrs. 
Bumble is not keeping her part of the bargain when 
she crawls in the back way to the honey-cellar. Did 
you never hear of the old compact between the flowers 



1 54 Little People. 

and bees ? It is a very old one indeed, though it was 
not found out till some years ago, when people began 
to keep their eyes open and examine the wonderful 
things around them. Now, the bees' work is to make 
honey, and that of the flowers is to make seeds. The 
seeds are to be made out of that yellow dust called pol- 
len, and it is a curious thing that flowers cannot use 
their own pollen very well, but must exchange with 
others of their own kind if they would have good seeds. 
But how can they send pollen to each other? The 
wind would do sometimes, as in the case of the light 
grasses which grow so close together, and they em- 
ploy him to this day ; but the other plants soon found 
he was entirely too careless to be trusted with the 
precious powder, for he scattered it about and lost it. 
No, the Wind would never do for a messenger. 

Then they thought of the bees. They were steady 
and industrious, and would carry the pollen safely ; so 
the flowers laid in a stock of honey, and hung out 
bright-colored petals to attract the bees. Of course 
they came, and the agreement was made. The bees 
were to carry pollen from one flower to another, and 



The Wisest of the Little People. 155 

to the right ones, too ; for the pollen is only useful 
to another plant of the same kind ; and in return for 
this they were to be paid with honey from each flower. 

Now, the pollen is on the ends of long threads called 
stamens, that grow in the middle of each flower ; and 
when it is placed on the top of a tube called a pistil, 
growing between the stamens, it goes down to the seed- 
manufactory at the bottom. But the pistil must have 
some other flower's pollen put upon it, remember, al- 
though its own stamens may be close around it. 

Well, the bee goes into the flower, pushing against 
the stamens, and getting her hairy legs and back cov- 
ered with the yellow pollen ; and after getting her drop 
of honey, she goes to another flower of the same sort — 
watch her at her work, and you will see that she keeps 
to one kind — and crawling into the cup, brushes that 
pollen all over the sticky pistil. Then squirming out, 
and taking a fresh load from the stamens, she goes on 
to put it in the next flower. 

Of course, when the bumble-bee bites a hole in the 
side of the blossom, and never touches the stamens or 
pistil, she is not getting the honey honestly at all ; but 



156 Little People. 

the flowers cannot help it, though they object to it very 
much. They have various ways of keeping out ants 
and flies that are too small to touch the pollen ; such as 
covering the petals and stem with entangling hairs, or a 
sticky gum that will not let them pass ; but the big, 
rough bumble-bee scorns all such traps, and against her 
they have no redress. 

We generally think of the Little People as living 
only in flower-cups, dancing in fairy rings by moon- 
light, and perhaps playing pranks in the chimney-cor- 
ner ; but now we are coming to a fairy city, full of dwell- 
ings, governed by laws, and all working together for 
the public good. The wasps and hornets have already 
given us an example of this in their great paper nests, 
but we had not time to examine those very closely ; so 
let us now pay a visit to the wonderful settlement of 

APIS TOWN. 

" Buzz, buzz, out of my way ! Don't interrupt me, 
or Fll show you my dagger ! I'm busy, I'm busy, busy, 
bizz-z-z ! " and away goes the little worker with a parting 
whir of her wings, taking her way so directly to the 



The Wisest of the Little People. 157 

garden that we understand at once what a " bee line " 
means. We will not follow her, for she really has not 
time to listen to us, but turn our attention to the city 
itself, and see what it is like. 

I think, to get any fair idea of it, we must first sum- 
mon some fairy to make us as small as the Little Peo- 
ple themselves, that we may enter the city gates and 
walk through the tiny streets ; and the powerful spirit 
Imagination will do this for us in a twinkling. Now, 
being rid of our clumsy human size, we can wander 
through the city at will, so let us enter one of the little 
arched gates, and see what lies within. 

We first notice that the city is all roofed in, to pro- 
tect it from the rain ; and this, it is true, the Little Peo- 
ple have not done themselves. A man prepared the 
place for their city, but the tiny inhabitants have built 
up these beautiful sparkling walls around ; and what is 
more, the man could never have made them himself, had 
he tried a thousand years. But we cannot all be fairies. 

And now, what are the citizens like ? They have 
wings, of course, almost all fairies have. They wear 
neat little brown suits, and each is provided with a very 



158 Little People. 

sharp dagger, with which to defend their homes and 
their lives. As to their magic wands, they keep them 
out of sight ; but they must use them to good purpose, 
as we can see from the beautiful building material that 
they have conjured out of the flowers. 

Stand aside, out of the way of this crowd of hurry- 
ing workers, who are coming in laden with honey, and 
dusty with the pollen of the flowers. Dear me, they 
haven't time to rest a minute ; but dropping their loads 
for some of their sisters to take care of, they scurry away 
again, so as not to lose a bit of time. Never was such 
a hard-working company, and yet they are never too 
hurried to do everything properly and carefully, as we 
shall see if we watch the builders yonder. They are 
adding more rooms to the queen's palace, I think — for 
they have a queen — and see what fine large rooms they 
are, with their six waxen sides. The ordinary dwell- 
ings have neat little rooms, or cells, of the same shape, 
but these are larger and handsomer, because the royal 
children are to be brought up there, and everything 
must be very fine. And where is the queen ? Like the 
one in the rhyme, we may find her eating bread and 



The Wisest of the Little People. 159 

honey, with her courtiers flocking around her, eager to 
wait upon her and obey her wishes in all things. She 
is larger than the others, but for the most part looks 
very much like them, and she stays in the city and 
never works in the fields like her industrious little sub- 
jects. However, she is far from idle, for she has all the 
workers to govern and keep in order, besides being 
very busy laying eggs, which the workers cannot do. 
She lays many more than a hen would do, so the work- 
ers, who take care of them, are kept quite as busy as 
she is ; storing them away in the neat little rooms, 
watching for them to hatch, and preparing food for the 
little ones when they come out. What do the babies 
live on in this curious city ? A strange fairy food, 
made from the pure honey mixed with yellow pollen, 
and worked up into bee-bread, that we have heard of 
before. The workers fill the cell with this, all around 
the Ggg f so when the young one is hatched it only has 
to eat its way out. It is a funny little creature in its 
babyhood, soft and white like a fat little worm, and not 
a bit like the winged creatures around it ; but it will 
grow up in time, and after its long nap, will come out 



160 Little People. 

of its nursery with wings, dagger, and all, which have 
been mysteriously given to it by Queen Nature while it 
lay in its enchanted sleep. 

Oh, oh ! What is the matter? There is a great ex- 
citement at one of the city gates. Some enemy is try- 
ing to force an entrance, and the Little People are on 
the alert at once. " Buzz, buzz ! Put him out, put him 
out ! Sting him ! Stab him ! Wall him up with 
wax! " and out rush a whole swarm of angry workers 
and soldiers to keep the destroyer from entering their 
home. In their haste they almost tumble over some 
other citizens, a little larger than themselves, who are 
loitering about in an idle sort of w r ay, as if they would 
like to help a little, but really found it too much trouble. 
It is strange to see such lazy creatures in such a busy 
place ; they do not gather supplies, nor help build the 
houses, nor even fight for their beautiful city, and yet 
these are the fine gentlemen who ought to protect the 
queen, for whom they profess such devotion. Instead 
of that, they let their sisters do all the work, and even 
go forth as soldiers in time of war ; indeed they could 
not fight, for Queen Nature will not allow them to carry 



The Wisest of the Little People, 161 

swords. So they are really only burdens on the city, 
eating the provisions that their hard-working sisters 
bring in, and doing nothing whatever to help them. 
They are allowed to remain there and wait on the 
queen, for a while ; but wait till fall comes, and a ter- 
rible punishment will overtake these lazy drones ! Un- 
conscious of the fate in store for them, they are now 
wandering idly about, gossiping together, and waiting 
to see the energetic little soldiers come back with news 
of victory, and no doubt a hearty scolding for their 
good-for-nothing brothers. 

And now let us peep into one of the royal nurseries, 
and see what is to be seen. The little princesses are 
fast asleep, or at least covered up carefully, and we may 
not disturb them ; but let us ask this careful nurse in 
charge of them a few questions. If we show an inter- 
est in the little creatures I think she will be pleased, 
though she is rather quick-tempered, like most of the 
people in Apis Town, and ready enough to use her 
sharp little dagger when she gets angry. 

" Good-morning ! How are their royal highnesses 

to-day ? " 

ii 



1 62 Little People. 

" 'Sh, 'sh ! " says the nurse, moving' her wings ner- 
vously. " Don't disturb them ! One has been asleep a 
long time, and when she wakes I fear there will be stir- 
ring times in town ! We are over-crowded now, you 
know ! " 

u I don't understand. What will happen when the 
young queen comes out ? " 

" Wait and see," whispers the nurse. " I think I 
hear her stirring ! There can be but one queen at a 
time in Apis Town ! " 

Well, the good nurse is evidently too anxious to ex- 
plain her fears any more clearly, so let us take her ad- 
vice, and wait till we can see for ourselves. I think if 
she were more at ease she would tell us about the royal 
jelly prepared for the princesses, to make them strong 
and beautiful ; and the fine large cells, instead of the 
little contracted ones, in which they can stretch their 
limbs. She might have told us, too, of the difficulty 
they would be in should the old queen die suddenly, 
and leave no little princesses to succeed her. In that 
case they would be in a dreadful dilemma, for the city 
cannot govern itself, and only the queen can lay eggs, 



The Wisest of the Little People. 163 

so there will be no more princesses. What do you 
think they do ? Why, they pull down the walls of the 
cell where one of the baby workers is lying, and having 
enlarged its room to the size of the royal cells, they be- 
gin to feed it at once with royal jelly, that wonderful 
fairy food that makes the one who lives on it a queen. 
So in time a new queen would leave the made-over cell, 
and come forth to rule the city, and get it in order 
again, after the confusion into which it must fall while 
they have no one to govern them. 

But what is this ? While we have been talking, the 
young queen has come forth and stands before her sub- 
jects. Instantly all is excitement ; so we will just get 
into a corner and watch to see what happens. At first 
she looks about wonderingly, but soon begins to realize 
the situation. She looks jealously at the old queen, and 
the old queen looks severely at her. The fickle cour- 
tiers swarm about the beautiful young creature, the 
workers caress her and promise to care for her faith- 
fully. The poor old queen is forgotten by most of 
them. But, as the nurse said, there cannot be two 
queens at once in the same town, and signs of civil war 



164 Little People. 

begin to show themselves. The old queen on one side, 
the young one on the other ; and each with her multi- 
tudes ready to defend her — what a terrible state of af- 
fairs for a peaceful, happy city ! 

However, these Little People are more sensible than 
we are in some ways. When two of their queens have 
a quarrel, they do not send forth great armies to fight 
and kill each other till thousands of lives are lost ; but 
they just meet and fight it out between themselves, 
while their subjects stand by to see fair play. Such 
may be the result of the meeting between the two rival 
queens ; but no ! Hark ! Listen to that strange, pierc- 
ing cry that the old one sends forth — a cry that strikes 
terror to all who hear it. See them stop and listen as 
though they were under a spell. They never hear that 
sound except in some fearful moment when nothing else 
will bring them to their senses, and they cannot disobey 
it. Every citizen near forgets her excitement and an- 
ger, the furiously humming wings are drooping, their 
old reverence for the queen is coming back. See them 
returning, meek enough now, to her side. What does 
that cry mean ? I cannot tell you, but it has a wonder- 



The Wisest of the Little People. 165 

ful effect on the unruly citizens ; and did you not think 
there was something very strange and awful about it ? 
See, they are following the queen back to the palace ; 
but the young one is not deserted. Many of the work- 
ers are still clustering about her — probably they were 
too far away to hear the mysterious summons that so 
completely subdued the others. They seem to be as- 
suring her of their everlasting devotion, and she may 
be making them a speech, and telling them how happy 
she will make them if they will be true to her, and work 
for her. There is a great agitation in the crowd about 
her. " We will ! We will ! " they seem to say, and 
they crowd around eager to see her and pet her. Sud- 
denly she spreads her gauzy wings and rises in the air. 
" Follow me ! " she says, and with a great whir the 
multitude rises and pours forth after her. Out of the 
city gates — away into the sunshine, across the garden 
to the large elm-tree, where they stop to rest, all cling- 
ing together in a great black mass. " Quick, get the 
new hive ready ! " says the bee-keeper, looking up from 
his work in the garden. " There's a new swarm of 
bees ! " 



1 66 Little People. 

Now, what fairies could do more wonderful things 
than these queer little citizens of the beehive, with their 
busy workers, and powerful queen, and even the poor, 
lazy drones, who can't so much as sting you if you catch 
them ? If you would like to know what becomes of 
these drones, by the way, visit Apis Town in the fall, 
and see the last scene of the summer drama, which is 
something of a tragedy after all. The busy worker- 
ladies have endured their lazy brothers' society just as 
long as they can, they are not going to have them on 
their hands all winter too. What will they do ? Turn 
them out in the cold? Oh, no, they would be back 
again in a minute, and the command has gone forth — 
the drones must die ! 

Perhaps you will expect the queen to interfere and 
save her courtiers, but, on the contrary, she quite ap- 
proves of the slaughter ; and the Amazon soldiers fall 
upon the helpless drones, who can only beg for mercy, 
having no stings to defend themselves with. Their 
stern sisters are pitiless, and every drone is killed and 
flung out of the hive — a terrible example to all lazy 
people. 



The Wisest of the Little People. 167 

The poor drones ! One feels rather sorry for them 
after all, for it is not their nature to work ; and yet it is 
quite reasonable that the workers should not feel able to 
make honey for a crowd of hungry people who will do 
nothing to earn it. But the drones are avenged, for 
human thieves come to the hive, and take away the 
carefully-made honey-combs, leaving the bees to get 
through the winter with the little remaining to them. 

THE ANT'S STORY. 

So you have taken me away from our hill, and made 
me lose a whole day's work, just to hear my story, have 
you ? Well, the selfishness of you human beings is be- 
yond anything I have seen among all my ant acquaint- 
ances. Why, you even take pleasure in treading on 
our hills, and crushing in the galleries that we work so 
hard to make, though what possible amusement it can 
be to you I cannot understand, unless you enjoy mak- 
ing other people miserable. 

Well, if you will promise to take me home again as 
soon as I have finished, I will tell my story as well as I 
can. I am a red ant, you see ; and as you know, I live 



1 68 Little People. 

in the large ant-hill under the pine-trees. There are a 
great many of us worker-ants, but it is well there are 
enough for us to divide the labor, for you have no idea 
what a piece of work it is to keep such an establishment 
in good running order. The bees boast of the amount 
of work they accomplish, but who wouldn't, when 
everything is made so easy for them ? Haven't they 
got stings to keep off troublesome people like you, who 
stop hard-working insepts right in the middle of the 
day, to get information ? Haven't they wings, workers 
and all ? Haven't they snug hives to live in ? We 
poor worker-ants have to be on our feet all day, and 
nobody builds any houses to shelter us. We have to 
do everything ourselves. Besides, the bees' children 
are not half the trouble that ours are, for they are satis- 
fied with a comfortable nursery and plenty to eat ; but 
ours must be taken care of all the time, and fed, and 
carried about till their nurses are nearly worn out. 

You really don't know how we arrange our houses 
inside? Well, well, and yet you great creatures think 
yourselves so wise ! I am glad you never thought of 
trying the plan of the Professor who was here last sum- 



The Wisest of the Little People. 169 

mer. He came out to our hill with a great pane of glass 
in his hand, and putting it edgewise across the front 
door — which is in the top, you know — hammered it 
straight into the ground. You may imagine the fright 
we were in, at having this great thing come crashing 
down through our halls and galleries, destroying every- 
thing in its way, and dividing the house in the middle ! 
The Professor left it there and went away, and we set 
to work at once to repair damages, though the glass 
was dreadfully in our way ; but we hardly had the place 
in order when that terrible man came back. He had a 
spade with him this time, and if you will believe it, what 
should he do but dig away all one side of our nest, 
close to the glass ! Of course he had a full view of the 
other side through the pane, and I hope he felt a little 
ashamed of himself when he saw the dismay he had 
caused. To think of having the full light of day sud- 
denly let into our underground home ! How the nurses 
ran to snatch up the delicate infants and carry them back 
to the quiet darkness ! The shock was enough to de- 
stroy our nerves forever, and here a whole company 
had to be made miserable to satisfy the curiosity of one 



170 Little People. 

Professor. Rather than undergo the same thing again 
at your hands, I will tell you everything about our 
home. The little heap of sand you see above ground 
is a very small part of it, and all our halls and corridors 
wind about underground. They are arranged very 
carefully, opening into each other and into the rooms, 
where everything is kept in the best order. We are 
very busy all day here, for it takes us a long time to dig 
these tunnels ; taking up one grain of sand at a time, 
instead of sweeping up a whole spadeful of earth at 
once, as you would do. While some of us work at the 
house, others must go to market, for we have a large 
family to provide for — a whole army of workers, and 
lords and ladies besides. You know us workers well ; 
our lords and ladies you saw one day last fall, when we 
were taking them out for exercise, and I heard you 
wondering at the swarm of winged ants crawling on the 
ground, or flying gently up and down the air, forming a 
column of gauzy wings. We took them back before 
sundown, for you have no idea of the care those lords 
and ladies require ; we actually have to help them off 
with their wings, which they will not need again, as 



The Wisest of the Little People. 1 7 1 

they stay in the nest so much. No, it doesn't hurt 
them, for they are made to come off. 

When the season for laying eggs begins, we work- 
ers are kept busy, as the queen-ants take no care at all 
of their own children. We do not have one queen to 
rule us, as the bees do, but get along very well without 
any governing head ; so we have plenty of queen-ants, 
who do all the egg-laying, while we wingless ones work 
for them* The eggs need constant watching, for they 
must not be allowed to get too dry, and when the little 
ones hatch they are perfectly helpless. It is true that 
the nurses get very fond of the little creatures, still 
they are a great care, and it is almost a relief when they 
can be rolled up in their pupa-garments and put to bed, 
till they are ready to come forth, full-grown ants. 

Well, some time ago, just as we had gotten quite a 
number of the babies safely into their long sleep, and 
the nurseries were full of little ones still to be fed and 
washed all the time, there was great commotion among 
some of our workers and soldiers. I went down to see 
what the matter was, and met one of the nurses coming 
up the corridor. 



172 Little People. 

" Why are the soldiers forming their lines ? " I in- 
quired. " I have been out to market, and heard nothing 
of it till just now." 

" It is all the fault of those gauzy-winged, lazy lords 
and ladies ! " grumbled the nurse, looking around at the 
same time to be sure that none of them were near. 
" They are determined to have some black slaves, like 
our neighbors across the road, and the soldiers have 
been ordered to make a raid on the black ants' nest at 
the edge of the woods. As if the nurseries were not 
full enough already ! We workers will have enough to 
do enlarging them, for if they bring back many eggs 
and little ones we cannot possibly find room for them as 
things are at present. One would think we nurses 
never needed rest — at least we don't get any. And now 
we shall have all the little slaves to bring up." 

" Well," said I, " they will relieve us of the work 
when they are grown up, and then we shall be glad 
enough to have them. Were you consulted about it ?" 

"Yes," she said; "but of course I had to agree 
with the others." 

" Certainly," said I, for that is the law of our ant- 



The Wisest of the Little People. 173 

hill. How do you think so many of us could live to- 
gether if we all had different ideas and opinions, and 
each insisted on having her own way ? That would 
never do ! But by always thinking and acting together, 
we keep our colony thriving and powerful. 

Of course I agreed with the others, that it would be 
well to send out the army for the slaves, but I did not 
go with them, as my work would take me into the 
depths of the hill, to enlarge the nurseries. We work- 
ers do not all have the same duties, you see ; some fight, 
some take care of the little ones, and some work on the 
nest, but we all look just alike, and each of us can do any 
one of these things. Those of us who remained at home 
stood at the door to see the regiments move off, and a 
very fine sight they presented as they marched out in 
battle array, their red uniforms glistening in the sun. 
They must have struck terror to the hearts of the black 
ants as they advanced upon their nest, and you may 
imagine the confusion, the blacks rushing forth to battle, 
their sentinels defending the nest, and their nurses try- 
ing to hide the children. Of course the fight was a 
fearful one, though we ants have no weapons but our 



174 Little People. 

strong jaws and legs, and all our conflicts are hand to 
hand, as you would say ; but our soldiers are in earnest 
when they fight, and when two meet, neither will let go 
till one is dead or crippled. So, of course, there was a 
good deal of slaughter on both sides ; but the blacks 
being taken by surprise, our red force completely over- 
whelmed them. They swarmed over the hill, rushed 
through the corridors, and, overpowering the nurses, 
who fought bravely to defend their charges, broke into 
the rooms where the eggs and little ones were kept. 

Now, you need not call us cruel, for I know you 
great creatures have your wars, and not long ago many 
of you t kept slaves too. We always treat our black 
slaves as kindly as if they were of our own color, so you 
had better think of what your own people used to do, 
and not scold us ants. I know all about it, for I used to 
hear you and the Professor talk last summer up there 
under the pines, and learned a great many things about 
you giants. 

Well, the result of the matter was, that after I and a 
great many other workers had been busy with the new 
nurseries for some hours, our troops came marching 



The Wisest of the Little People. 175 

back, carrying the tiny shining eggs and little white baby 
ants. We welcomed the victorious soldiers with great 
rejoicing, cared for those that had been injured, and car- 
ried the little strangers down to the nurseries, where we 
treated them as gently as their own black nurses would 
have done. 

By this time I was rather tired, and would have pre- 
ferred resting- and hearing the soldiers tell about the 
battle to doing any more work, but duty always comes 
before pleasure in the ant-hill. It was nearly time to 
milk the cows, so I set out, with several others, for the 
pasture. Our pasture is situated on the grape-vine that 
grows near the pines, quite a distance from the hill ; but 
we had not then any means of keeping our cows nearer 
home, and had to take quite a walk when we went to 
milk them. You never heard of our cows ? Then you 
are very ignorant, and will have to ask the Professor 
about it ; I am going on with my story. 

This day I am telling about was an eventful one, for 
the excitement of getting the slaves and having our sol- 
diers distinguish themselves in battle had by no means 
subsided when my companions and I started a-milking. 



176 Little People. 

It was getting late, and we could delay no longer, for 
we ants never go out after dark if we can possibly help 
it. That is a family failing with us, you may trace it in 
the bees and wasps and all our most distant relations — 
we are all creatures of the sunshine. 

We went up the winding stem of the grape-vine, 
and arriving at our pasture, paused for a moment, ap- 
palled at the scene before us. There were our cows, to 
be sure, feeding as usual— the confiding little brown 
creatures ! — and waiting to be milked ; but advancing 
upon the unconscious herd was a monster that made us 
shudder. He was a great hideous creature like an al- 
ligator, dull blue in color, with red patches on his tail ; 
he walked stealthily along on six black legs, with a 
fierce and hungry gleam in his eyes. And even as we 
watched him, the wretch sprang upon one of our poor 
little cows, tore him limb from limb, and devoured him 
before our eyes. But you may be sure we did not 
stand there long, though at first we were positively 
frozen with horror. We sprang forward upon the mon- 
ster, that was two or three times larger than any of us, 
but as he was rather cowardly after all, we soon put 



The IVisest of the Little People. 177 

him to flight, and then drove the frightened cows to the 
other end of the pasture. The poor little things were 
very much alarmed at the danger they had been in, but 
we stroked and caressed them, and as they know us 
well they were soon soothed. Then we milked them 
and came home, with plenty of the sweet honey-dew 
they had given us. 

Of course, the other ants came out to meet us and 
get some honey-dew as soon as we drew near home, so 
we fed them from our supply, and told them our advent- 
ure at the same time. This was not the first time our 
cows had been in danger, and as soon as we had a 
chance to talk the matter over, we began to consider 
what had better be done. 

Did you think we ants were unable to talk to each 
other and make plans as you loud-voiced giants do ? 
Then you are much mistaken. Whenever there is an 
important matter to be discussed, groups of us may be 
seen standing about the door, or meeting in the hall- 
ways, talking most earnestly ; and though you will 
hear nothing, you may see the conversation carried on 

by our antennae, with which we touch each other when 
12 



178 Little People. 

we have anything to say. The Professor used to be 
always trying experiments with us, to find out how 
much we could say to each other, and once he took me 
a long way off to a piece of meat, too heavy for me to 
move alone. There he stood to see what I would do ; 
and I, of course, went back to the hill to get some of the 
others to help me, as any reasonable creature would. 
As soon as I told them about the meat, several of them 
came back with me to the place where it lay, and helped 
me carry it home ; while the Professor watched us, say- 
ing, " It is evident that these insects have some means 
of communication, and it appears to be through the an- 
tennae. " " Some means of communication, " indeed ! I 
should think so ! You giants are so astonished when 
you find any intelligence among us, that I sometimes 
lose all patience with you ; but you are so big and 
clumsy, I suppose you cannot help being stupid. 

But I was going to tell you what we did about our 
cows. We talked over various places where we might 
pasture them, but none would be safe from that destroy- 
ing monster unless it were close to our hill, where we 
could have an eye upon our herds all the time ; so one of 



The Wisest of the Little People. 179 

us suggested that as some of our neighbors kept their 
cows in barns, and found that plan a very good one, we 
might try it ourselves. It was agreed, therefore, that 
we should try the experiment; so the next day we went 
to work tunnelling out a nice wide cavern close around 
some roots, which would do to feed the cows with. All 
our buildings are underground, you know. When all 
was ready, we went to the pasture and carried home the 
cows ; which are smaller than we are and quite gentle, 
so we can carry them about as easily as you carry the 
cat. I don't think they altogether liked the change, for 
a few of them died ; but most of them flourished in their 
underground retreat, and lived upon the roots quite 
comfortably. 

When you captured me to-day, I was very busy tak- 
ing out the earth from our new store-room, where we 
intend to hoard up grain for the winter ; for though a 
few of our slaves have passed through their changes 
and come out full-grown black ants, we still have a 
great deal of work to do. If you visit us next summer, 
however, you will find our slaves doing most of the 
work about the hill, while we red ants can take the time 



180 Little People. 

to go off to battle, or to seek provisions ; but I trust that 
we shall never come to such a melancholy end as befel 
one of our neighboring hills a year or two ago. They, 
like us, had black slaves, that of course are always 
worker-ants, which have no wings, and lay no eggs, 
you remember. But a few of the little blacks turned 
out queen-ants instead, and by some mistake one of 
these was not killed. You may be surprised that we 
should always kill the black queen-ants, but you will 
soon see that we have a good reason. 

Well, in the case of our neighbors, this queen was 
not killed, and of course she went to work laying eggs. 
These the black nurses cared for carefully, and soon 
there were more black ants in the nest than red ones. 
As their numbers, both of workers, kings, and queens, 
increased, they grew more powerful, while the young 
reds were neglected ; so now that once flourishing red- 
ant colony is nothing but a black-ant hill, and scarcely 
one of its old owners remains. 

Another danger of the slave-holding system is that 
we reds do get lazy when we have somebody to wait on 
us all the time. The black slaves get fond of us, and 



L 



The Wisest of the Little People. 181 

will do anything for us that we ask, so we naturally fall 
into the way of leaving everything to them ; even mak- 
ing them feed us and carry us about, and in fact do all 
but the fighting. I hope, however, that our colony may 
not get to this state of affairs, for I am an active, hard- 
working ant, and do not think that a life of ease and 
idleness would suit me. 

I trust that what I have told you will make you treat 
our kind with more respect, and be careful not to tread 
on our hills when you find them in your path. If you 
are not convinced that we are an intelligent and skilful 
race, just ask the Professor to tell you about our rela- 
tions in Texas, who actually plant their own grain and 
reap it when it is ripe ; and our still more wonderful re- 
lations in India and Africa, that, I hear, are called visit- 
ing ants, because they travel in great armies, and make 
raids upon the houses of you human people, devouring 
every eatable thing in them, and driving out the unwill- 
ing hosts until their " visit " is over. Surely, when you 
think what that must be like, you will not object to an 
occasional call from us American ants, even if we do help 
ourselves to a few grains of sugar from your pantries. 



182 



Little People. 



How much worse it would be for you if you lived in 
Africa ! ' 

Now please take me back to the hill, and let me go to 
work again ; and if you don't believe ants have any feel- 
ing, or know their friends when 
they meet them, just see how 
glad they will be to have me 
come home, and how they will 
come crowding around me with 
affectionate greetings and anx- 
ious questions as to where I 
W^^K have been and what ^% ^$f 
ilfilkJili I have seen in your \lt;^^|jj- 
giant's castle ! 



) 




■- 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE FAIRIES' PETS AND THEIR 

RELATIONS. 



OU have heard what the 
busy little ant had to say- 
about her cows, and per- 
haps, when you came to the 
red and blue monster that at- 
tacked them you guessed what 
the " cows " were. We have 
seen them before, when we were 
following the lady-birds' adventures, 
and discovered the stupid little black 
creatures among the grasses ; but then 
we did not look at them very closely, 
because we were busy with the beetles. 
Now, these little a cows,"or more prop- 
erly aphides, are not all alike. Those we found on the 
red-top were black, but we often see grape-vines and 




184 Little People. 

other plants covered with brown ones, while trouble- 
some little green bugs infest our rose-bushes in a way 
we do not like at all. If we want to get rid of them, 
the best way will be to turn a few lady-birds, especially 
young ones, loose on the plant, and their hearty appe- 
tites will soon do the work. But to see why the ant 
described them as cows, look carefully at the largest 
ones, and watch the ants that are moving among them 
like herdsmen among their cattle. 

Most of the " cows " keep pretty still, with their 
trunks — for they all have trunks — fastened so firmly 
into the plant that we can hardly scrape them off with a 
stick ; but a few are lumbering about on six slender 
legs, that seem hardly large enough to support their 
clumsy bodies. We can plainly see two little pipes 
standing up in the back of each, and the ants know 
what these are for. The aphis spends all his time suck- 
ing the plant juice through his proboscis, and out of 
these little pipes ooze drops of a sweet liquid that the 
ants are very fond of. We call it honey-dew when we 
find it on the plants, but the ant does not collect it from 
the leaves ; she goes straight to the aphis and takes it 



The Fairies Pets and Their Relations. 185 

from the little pipes, petting and caressing the little 
creature very affectionately all the time. 

The aphides do not mind having the ants take the 
honey-dew, and are doubtless very grateful to them for 
driving away their enemies ; but we do not care to cher- 
ish them so carefully, for they do considerable harm to 
some of our plants, and a tremendous number is hatched 
every year. This is because they grow up very fast, 
for an aphis born in the spring may be a great-grand- 
mother before the summer is over ; and if they had not 
so many enemies to destroy them, they would soon form 
a devouring army, and not leave a green thing on the 
earth. 

One kind of aphis has found a new way to protect 
itself from danger. It is covered with a sticky white 
fuzz, making it look almost as if it had feathers, like a 
bird. The other insects and the birds do not like to get 
this fuzz in their mouths, or else do not recognize the 
brown and green aphides in these queer fluffy things, so 
they are well shielded from all harm. 

They are all wonderful little creatures, these tiny 
bugs that we brush so carelessly from our plants, sel- 



1 86 Little People. 

dom thinking that each has a little life to itself, with 
its own experiences, toils, comforts, dangers, and uses. 
We do not always understand this last, but we do know 
that nothing which God has made can be entirely use- 
less ; and when we have to kill them it would be well for 
us to think more about their strange being, and remem- 
ber that the tiniest of them is not too small for the Cre- 
ator of all to watch over and provide for. 

The aphides are not the only bugs that have hit 
upon the plan of hiding under white fluff to escape from 
danger, and the clusters of froth that we sometimes see 
in the grass are devised by tiny insects as a protection, 
though it is not exactly like the mealy covering of the 
aphis. Did you ever see these little bits of froth, that 
look like soap-suds, close around the grass stems, or on 
leaves ? If you brush the froth away, you will be re- 
warded by the sight of a queer little, bare, cream-colored 
creature that we may call a grub ; for though most bugs 
leave the egg with almost the same appearance that 
they will have when they are grown up, a few have a 
real grub state. 

And, just here, let me remind you that we are»all 



The Fairies Pets and Their Relations. 187 

too much in the habit of calling any insect a bug. Real 
bugs are a certain kind of insect called half-winged,* 
though it is true that description does not apply very 
well to all of them ; and all that we shall meet with in 
this chapter are true bugs, while the other insects whose 
acquaintance we have made have been of quite a differ- 
ent sort. 

But to return to our grub — what kind of a bug do 
you think he turns into ? I think you know him, though 
you may not have thought he had anything to do with 
the froth in the grass. No wonder, for when he is 
grown up he lives there no more, but spends his days 
flying or hopping about the trees and bushes, from 
which he is called the tree-hopper. A queer little sprite 
is he, with a three-cornered back, and fine wings folded 
down tightly to his sides ; and when you touch him — 
snap ! away he goes, spreading his little wings if he 
wishes to go any distance. If he will only stand still a 
minute you may discover him to be a very pretty creat- 
ure ; but the tree-hoppers are not all alike, and some 
are plain brown or quiet green, while others are dec- 

* Hemiptera. 



1 88 Little People. 

orated with the finest blue and red stripes, forming a 
succession of letter v's, one within the other, on their 
backs. They look very gay as they hop about the 
flowers, in the full sunlight, or taking wonderful leaps, 
which make us think they have discovered the secret of 
Hop-o'-my-thumb's seven-league boots. At any rate, 
the gymnastic performances of these little Hop-o'-my- 
thumbs are far beyond anything we can see at a circus. 

But, odd and pretty as some bugs are, there are 
many more that are neither pretty nor pleasant, and 
which sometimes do much harm with their pointed 
mouths. All you children who live in the country know 
the ill-smelling squash-bug, that lives not only on 
squashes, but melon and cucumber vines as well, and 
sometimes injures them very much by eating their leaves. 
He has a flat back, of a dull slate color, and six slow- 
moving legs, on which he wanders over the vine, or off 
it into our houses ; where we do not care to have him, 
though there are others of his kind whose visits are still 
worse. There are many bugs like these, which all do 
more or less injury and are generally but too well 
known ; but the scale-insects, which are also bugs of a 






The Fairies' Pets and Their Relations. 189 

certain kind, are even more disliked by farmers, and 
people who own orchards. 

These are ugly little bugs, that cling to the bark of 
tree-branches, sucking the sap from them as the aphides 
do from the smaller plants. They are generally dark 
brown, and flatten themselves so closely against the 
bark of the same color, that we can hardly see them, or 
if we do, often take them for warts or a mere roughness 
of the boughs. The farmer knows better, and he is a 
great enemy of the ugly creatures that would destroy 
his fruit-trees if they were let alone, and he puts all sorts 
of things on the tree to keep them from clinging there, 
or to poison them if they do. They are almost shape- 
less, and can be scraped from the bark with a knife or 
washed off by a hard rain, as if they were not live in- 
sects at all ; and all they do is to stick fast and suck the 
sap all day long. 

Now, what use are these ugly and harmful creatures 
in the world ? 

Well, they help to feed the birds, and that is some- 
thing ; but some of their relations are very useful to us 
too, though not in quite the same way. Far off in the 



190 Little People. 

warm countries, lives an insect very like the destructive 
black scale-insect in many ways, and may be found upon 
bushes, sucking their life out just as their despised kin- 
dred do in this country. But, strange to say, people are 
very glad to find these little bugs covering the bushes, 
and will collect them with great care ; and when they 
have a quantity will send them to the large cities of 
the colder countries, where the cochineal does not live. 

Now that you know their name, can you tell what 
we use these tiny bugs for ? I think some of you must 
know. A beautiful scarlet dye is made from cochineal, 
and is used for coloring many things, even to make red 
sugar for the icing on cakes, and to tint French candies. 
So here we see one of the most disliked bugs becoming, 
in one branch of its family, a useful and cleanly creature, 
which is put to various purposes we use no other insect 
for. 

And this is not the only one of the bark-clinging 
insects that makes itself valuable to us, making up for 
the harm done by others of its family ; for in India and 
some other warm countries lives the little lac-insect, 
which is one of this kind. 



The Fairies Pets and Their Relations. 191 

Perhaps you have seen pieces of shellac, which are 
used for making varnish ; or if you have not, you have 
certainly seen Japanese lacquer work, as it is called. 
Now, the gloss on these pretty trays and boxes is owing 
to the lac-insects, which, clinging by the thousand to the 
bark of trees, give out a sticky fluid all over their bodies, 
which they may intend for a protection, like the sticky 
white fuzz on some aphides. If that is their idea, they 
are sadly mistaken, for it proves their destruction in the 
end ; as when the shellac is gathered, they are taken 
from the branches with the hard gummy crust that 
spreads over their bodies, and so perish. No doubt 
they injure the trees, just as our common scale-insects 
do, but they are forgiven that for the sake of the shellac 
they furnish us, and which is used for many things be- 
sides those I have mentioned. 

These scale-insects, you must remember, hardly look 
like insects at all. I have told you that the common 
black ones may be taken for warts on the tree, and for 
a long time the cochineal was supposed to be a fruit of 
the cactus plants it fed upon. They cling so tightly, 
and remain so perfectly still all the time, that there is 



192 Little People. 

nothing about them to prove that they are alive, while 
as to shape, they may almost be said to have none. 
They are rather rounded on one side and flat under- 
neath, on the side toward the bark, and except when 
we look at them through a magnifying glass or micro- 
scope, we cannot see the parts of their bodies at all. 
Not that they are so very small, for the cochineal is 
nearly as large as a pea, and that is a very good size 
compared to some of the Little People ; but they are a 
very simple form of insect life, not at all like the highly- 
finished beetles, or long-limbed grasshoppers. 

However, all bugs are not helpless, or tiny, or dis- 
agreeable creatures, and there is one kind that has 
taken a fancy to join the water-sprites in the stream. 
Not among the pebbles at the bottom, however, but 
with the whirligig beetles on the surface, the funny 
" skaters," or " skippers " slide over the water as easily 
as a row-boat with six active oars. They avoid the 
ripples and rapids of the brook ; but in the still pools 
you may find them by dozens, in groups, floating slowly 
down on the current, and then, with a few quick, jerky 
movements, skating up-stream again. There they float 



The Fairies Pets and Their Relations. 193 

all day, as safe and dry as if they were on the land ; for 
they wear smooth, furry, waterproof suits, that can 
never get wet, even when they catch struggling water- 
insects, and suck out their lives, after the bug-fashion. 

But we must not linger by the brook, but returning 
to the drier atmosphere of the fields and trees, look for 
a handsome insect that you know well, by sound, if not 
by sight; for though everybody has heard the "locust" 
or harvest-fly sizzling away like a hot frying-pan on a 
July day, many people have never noticed the big, 
gauze-winged creature that does the frying. Now, I 
am quite sure that all of you who know anything about 
the country have seen those funny little brown goblins 
known as " locust-shells." Haven't you often picked 
them from the rough bark where they clung with their 
crab-like claws, and wondered at their great goggle 
eyes ? Most of these little things were hollow and dry, 
mere thin shells, with no life in them ; but perhaps you 
have found a few that moved when you touched them, 
and instead of crumbling to pieces between your fin- 
gers, felt solid and firm. When you found such a one, 
no doubt you said, " Oh, here is a locust-shell with a 

!3 



194 Little People. 

locust in it ! " and wondered when the insect would 
leave its clumsy coat of mail. Perhaps you watched it 
for a while, hoping to see the miracle take place at once, 
and when nothing happened, I dare say you grew tired 
waiting and went away, and left it to come out by itself. 
But if you will wait patiently, you shall be rewarded by 
seeing a very curious sight ; so let us put Mr. " Lo- 
cust " here on the fence, only checking him if he shows 
too wandering a disposition, and see what strange story 
he will act before our eyes. 

To begin with, we must give him his true name at 
once. Locust is only another name for grasshopper, as 
we found out some time ago, and this is an entirely dif- 
ferent insect, whose real name is cicada. Now, as 
cicada is just as easy to say, let us try to remember it 
in future, so we shall not make any mistakes when we 
read about locusts in the Bible, or in English books, 
written by people to whom the cicada is a foreign in- 
sect. As there are plenty of cicadas all over our coun- 
try, we ought certainly to know their true name as well 
as persons who have only read of them in books ; so 
let us remember it hereafter. 



The Fairies Pets and Their Relations. 195 

While we have been talking about his name, our 
cicada has been stirring and stretching himself, and 
seems to be making very active preparations for some- 
thing or other. He no longer tries to walk away, but 
fixing his claw-like feet firmly on the rough wood, 
stretches and pulls and tugs with might and main. 
And now, look ! The horny skin has cracked open 
down the back just like the back of a chrysalis, only 
while the chrysalis was a legless, headless, almost 
shapeless thing, that we could hardly call an insect at 
all, this wingless young cicada is quite active; with 
plenty of limbs and eyes, and a mouth for sucking as 
well. So it seems strange to see such a lively creature 
split open in this unconcerned manner, but we remember 
that the dragon-flies did the same thing, and no harm 
befel them- And so the shell cracks, and the live insect 
within wriggles and struggles and at last gets its head 
out ; but slowly, for it is a very broad, squarish head, 
with a big, bright eye at each corner of its forehead, 
arid two very short antennae in the middle. It is not 
a gracefully shaped head, but it shines and glistens 
with beautiful rainbow colors, and so does the broad 



196 Little People. 

back that follows it out of the shell. On this appear 
two very much crumpled wings, tinted, however, with 
the most lovely and delicate shade of green, which 
make us think that the cicada will turn out a very beau- 
tiful insect indeed. He is handsome ; but, alas ! the deli- 
cate green tinge grows dull as the wings expand, the 
iridescent hues fade, and the full-fledged cicada is black 
above and white underneath, with large transparent 
wings slightly bordered with green. 

When he has gained his strength, he will fly away 
into the trees, and begin to spring his rattle, to make 
people think the day even hotter than it really is. His 
empty shell remains where he stood on the fence, look- 
ing exactly as it did before he left it. If you have a 
fancy for collecting these shells, like some children I 
have known, and have gone about looking for them on 
one tree after another, you may have wondered where 
they all came from. Well, now that we have learned 
where the cicada goes, we certainly ought to find out 
whence he came, and this we may do by following the 
fortunes of the winged ones that are singing in the 
branches. 



^^ 




THE LITTLE NATURALIST. 



The Fairies Pets and Their Relations. 199 

Like the Katy-dids, only the males can make any 
sound, and they do it with their wings much after the 
Katy-did fashion. Their silent wives have quite a dif- 
ferent work to do. They each have a long, sharp 
sword, and with this they cut slits in the bark, and lay 
their eggs in the places thus made for them. After 
making a number of these slits, and filling each with lit- 
tle white eggs, mother Cicada goes away, and soon 
dies, having done all her duty in the world. 

And what happens to the eggs ? 

Well, they hatch in six weeks or so, and out come 
queer little larvae, that fall at once to the ground, and 
burrowing into it, begin to suck the juices from the 
roots of the tree. There they live, summer and winter, 
for two years or more, so, if there are many of them, 
they can do some damage to the tree on whose roots 
they feed ; but of course they have underground ene- 
mies to kill them, and prevent our being visited by too 
large a swarm every summer. After so long a life in 
the earth, they creep out and climb up the trees, to 
leave their shells clinging to the bark, and fly away to 
an airy dwelling in the branches. 



200 Little People. 

There are some cicadas that are supposed to live in 
the ground much longer than even these, and to appear 
every seventeen years in great numbers. Plenty of 
people have argued and quarrelled over the seventeen- 
year cicada; whether it really did appear but once in 
that length of time, or every summer, like the ordinary 
kind ; and yet, in spite of all the breath, and ink, and 
time, and temper that have been spent on this subject, 
it has never been positively settled whether the seven- 
teen-year cicada is a seventeen-year cicada or not! 
No doubt they appear sometimes in much greater num- 
bers than usual ; that, at least, we may accept as truth ; 
and as to the seventeen-year part of the story, some of 
you may find that out yourselves, if you watch very 
carefully. 

This cicada is a little different from the common 
cicada or harvest-fly, that we watched coming out of its 
shell, for it is rather smaller, and its wings are bordered 
with red, instead of green ; so you will be sure to know 
one if you see it, and may watch to see if any more ap- 
pear in the same place next summer, or wait seventeen 
years before coming again. 



The Fairies Pets and Their Relations. 201 

The cicada is for the most part a harmless creature, 
at least after it leaves the ground, and to most people 
its song is rather pleasant, though it does tell of hot 
weather. But the Indians, and some other people with 
peculiar tastes, have another reason for liking the cica- 
das ; which they capture just after they have left the 
ground, and cook for dinner. We should not care to 
dine with these people ; but as we eat candies and jellies 
colored with cochineal, I suppose we have no good rea- 
son for being shocked at the idea of eating cicadas, so 
long as they taste good, which they are said to do. 

We see that the queer little cows of the ants, which 
were our first acquaintance among this family, have 
many relations not at all like themselves ; yet there are 
a few general points by which people know the bugs 
from other insects, just as we sometimes recognize broth- 
ers and sisters by some family peculiarity. The bugs 
do not bite with scissor-like jaws, nor drink through 
long trunks ; but suck with their pointed mouths, in 
which some of them keep a kind of poison which causes 
a painful wound when they sting us, much as the mos- 
quitoes do. One little creature, called the Persian bug, 



202 



Little People. 



because it lives in Persia, is not only an unpleasant but 
a very dangerous insect ; for its poison is very powerful, 
and can kill people or make them crazy. Fortunately 
for us, we have no bugs we need be much afraid of in 
this country, though we have any number of disagree- 
able ones. Except the cicadas, they are chiefly small 
and rather insignificant creatures ; yet the very fact that 
there are so many of them makes us feel that they have 
not been created without a purpose, and we shall some 
day understand the work and value of Queen Nature's 
weakest subjects. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

THE BROWNIES. 

'MONG the winged fairies and 
elves there are, as all children 
js§) well read in the annals of 
fairy-land know, some 
funny little creatures, 
with comical heads 
and long limbs, that 
cannot fly from place 
to place, and yet man- 
age to accomplish a 
great deal, either of 
mischief or useful 
work, by their activity 
and adroitness. In the fairyland around us these queer 
brownies have not been forgotten, and very nimble they 
are, besides showing, in some ways, intelligence almost 
equal to those we have called the wisest of the Little 




204 Little People. 

People. They are rather different from all the others, 
as we shall discover before we take leave of them ; but 
on the whole, their resemblance is close enough to give 
them a place with the others in our book. 

The best time to search for the brownies is in the 
early morning, before the dew has dried off the grass, 
when the feathery red-top is sparkling with diamonds, 
and the flower-cups are full, and the fairy table-cloths 
are spread upon the ground, showing where the elves' 
banqueting-hall was last night. They employ the 
brownies to make these table-cloths, and if we look at 
them closely we may find that it wasn't only for the 
fairy revels that they were spun, but that the busy 
weavers had their own interest in view when they 
spread this delicate tapestry over the grass. What if 
we should find that the spangled meshes formed really 
a tent in which the brownie was living for a time, like a 
gypsy, to move and camp again after the first shower ? 

We shall soon know if any one is at home, though at 
first we can only see the play of rainbows in the bright 
drops with which the gossamer is weighed down ; but 
then we notice a mysterious little tunnel, smooth and 



The Brownies. 205 

silky, leading from one corner into the depths of the 
grass. Is it empty ? Look again, and see if there are 
not some little brown legs resting on the side, just 
where a ray of light penetrates the hole ; and now if we 
give the web a gentle touch, out darts the brownie to 
see who is there. And a queer little creature she is ; 
with her eight legs, and her large head, set directly on 
her round body, with no appearance of a thorax be- 
tween. I said to begin with, you know, that she was 
different from all the other Little People, and this we 
shall see better as we go on. 

Evidently we are not the visitors she expected, for 
she soon begins a rather sulky retreat to her tunnel, 
probably scolding to herself about the idle people who 
have nothing to do but rout her out of her hole for their 
own amusement ; and settles down again, all ready to 
spring out when a real signal comes that somebody is 
there. Whom does she expect ? Big rough grasshop- 
pers skip through the grass, a hard-shelled beetle runs 
over a stone, and bees tumble and buzz in the clover- 
blossoms, with their stings well sheathed, yet ready 
enouofh to use them in case of need. I don't believe 



206 Little People. 

the brownie cares to have any of them come to see her 
in her fragile tent ; they are too big, and strong, and 
rough, and if one should come in, she would not urge 
her visitor to stay. But here is a plump, idle fly, 
almost the only creature that is not busy on this bright 
summer morning, sunning himself on a stone, and pol- 
ishing his already shining wings. He has been enjoy- 
ing a refreshing dew-drop, and is looking about with 
his sharp eyes for something more substantial in the 
way of breakfast — looking about for enemies too, per- 
haps, for if you put out your hand to touch him — " No, 
you don't," says the fly, and away he goes, secure in 
the strength of his quick eyes and wings. 

Alas for the fly's calculations ! Quick wings are of 
no use against the spider's wily designs ! She wouldn't 
attempt to chase him, but she knows how to turn his 
very safeguard into his danger, by making those swift 
wings carry him directly into her clutches. She has 
spread her web for him, and plump into it he goes. If 
it were only a slippery wall or a ceiling, the fly would 
be quite at home ; but this soft, light, entangling web is 
the one thing he cannot walk Qn, and the sticky balls on 



The Brownies. 207 

his feet, that help him to cling to a window-pane, only 
make matters worse now. He wriggles and pulls, and 
at this, out comes the spider to see what is the matter. 

It is no use for the fly to plead that he had no in- 
tention of intruding, that it was all a mistake, that he 
wouldn't have disturbed her for the world, and will go 
at once, if she will only help him out of the mesh that 
has entangled him. But she doesn't help him out. On 
the contrary, she makes sure that he will remain, by 
winding a long thread around him a few times, (how he 
must envy her as she runs so lightly over the web !) 
and so secures him for her breakfast. 

All the brownies are out this morning ! If the tent 
in the grass was a pretty sight, what shall we say of 
this beautiful wheel, every line even and straight, fast- 
ened between the bars of the gate so strongly, and yet 
so lightly that it sways with every breeze that passes ? 
It, too, is spangled, and every shining line glitters in the 
sun, and we think such a beautiful air-castle ought to 
be the home of some delicate moonlight fay, instead of 
that comical, ugly brownie that hangs in the middle of 
it. But that very brownie has produced this fairy 



2o8 Little People. 

palace, and we see that we cannot always judge from 
the appearance of any one what work he is able to do. 
And how did the spider weave this dream-fabric? 

If we had been here yesterday, before sundown, we 
should have seen the process, and I am sure you would 
have pronounced it a very curious one. Did you ever 
see a spider busy with such a web ? If not, take a 
good look at this one, and you will be able to under- 
stand how she does it. Her weaving instrument is on 
the underside of her body, and we can see it quite 
plainly in such a large spider — six little points, which 
are called spinnerets. Out of these spinnerets comes 
the sticky gum that hardens into silk when it reaches 
the air. Then, as there are six spinnerets, why do not 
six threads, instead of one, come from the spider as she 
spins ? This is just what happens, only they are all 
twisted into one as soon as they come forth ; and even 
this is not the most wonderful part of it. The spin- 
nerets have not only one opening apiece for the web to 
come out of, but each is pierced with about a hundred 
of the tiniest holes, and a separate strand comes 
through each ; so instead of six, six hundred almost 



The Brownies. 209 

invisible threads are rolled into the slender one we see 
coming from the spider ! Just think how tiny one of 
the strands must be, if six hundred of them put to- 
gether make a cord hardly thick enough to be seen ! 

And now, let us see how the spider manages her 
web as she spins it. She has plenty of feet, you see — 
eight instead of only six, like other insects — and so 
while she runs on some of them, she can use the others 
as hands to clasp the web. They are well fitted for 
such work, having something like fingers and thumb, 
not to mention a perfect little comb through which the 
thread runs ; so the spider has her tools always with 
her. But how T does she use them ? 

Well, in making such a web as this, she let out a 
long line that floated in the air and was carried by the 
breeze till the end rested against the gate-post, and was 
sticky enough to cling there. Then she glued her end 
firmly against the rail, and ran over her tight-rope to 
the gate-post, where she fastened it securely, and pro- 
ceeded to let herself down by a fresh strand to the bar 
below, swinging to and fro till she touched the point 

to which she wished to attach it. A few of these ropes, 
14 



210 Little People. 

stretched out in different directions, form the foundation 
of her silky house, but they are not the real, beautiful 
web itself. They are only the scaffolding on which she 
runs while she builds, and give her something to which 
she can fasten her web. Then she makes the long 
spokes, by running to the middle and back again, leav- 
ing a train of thread behind her every time ; and when 
all are formed, she begins to go round and round, 
fastening her thread to each spoke, and so making a 
beautiful, perfect wheel. Even before the dew has fal- 
len upon it, it shines as if it were made of spun glass. 
That is because it is sticky, just as Mrs. Spider wants it 
to be ; and indeed, she has been careful to spangle it 
with drops of gum as she worked, that will not dry in 
the air like the rest of the web. Her own feet, being 
made for climbing and running on such a web, are 
never entangled ; but other insects, which are made 
quite differently, will have some trouble in escaping 
from the net that their enemy has prepared for them. 

This is not like the closely-woven tapestry on the 
grass, you see. It is loose and light, and hangs per- 
pendicularly between the bars of the gate, while the 



The Brownies. 211 

other lay flat over the young grass-blades. Both kinds 
are dangerous enough to the unthinking insects that 
walk or fly into them, but this one is designed espe- 
cially to catch them on the wing ; and so is very light 
and airy, that they may not see the barrier in their way. 

After her breakfast, the spider, if she is a careful 
housekeeper, will throw the remains of it on the ground, 
and mend the web ; so that no trace of her capture may 
be seen to frighten others away. Sometimes, however, 
new victims will come when she has already satisfied 
her appetite. In that case she does not eat them at 
once ; but she has her ideas of the future,, for she care- 
fully ties them with meshes of web spun round and 
round them, and leaves them till her next meal-time, 
when she may not be able to get any more. 

But this spider cannot build one house for all time, 
as some of the other Little People do. Her web is less 
of a house than a trap, and every shower or high wind 
destroys it and renders it necessary for her to make an- 
other ; but it does not take her very long ; generally less 
than an hour. The spiders that make thicker webs, with 
tunnels in them, have a little more home feeling about 



212 Little People. 

them. To be sure those on the grass or in stone walls 
are liable to be often destroyed, but when a spider 
comes into the house, and takes up her abode in the 
corner of some unused room, she may live there a long 
time, and there bring up her family. Such spiders do 
not make dainty round webs, but spin the threads criss- 
cross in a corner, or behind, furniture ; without taking 
any pains to make the mesh even. These are the cob- 
webs we find in garrets and cellars, and brush from the 
ceiling with long brooms ; for not only flies get caught 
in them, but dust as well, and make the web an un- 
sightly, black, ragged, thing that we can hardly think of 
in connection with the air-castle on the gate. 

Now these spiders' domestic arrangements are very 
queer indeed, and I hardly think you would like to be- 
long to such a family as we may find established in the 
corner. We shall perhaps find two full-grown ones in 
the web, one being considerably smaller than the other ; 
and we may be sure the larger one is the housewife 
who does all the spinning and lays the eggs in neat lit- 
tle cobweb bags, while the smaller is her lazy husband, 
who does not trouble himself about building the web, 



The Brownies. 213 

but stands in some fear of his stronger mate. He has 
good reason to fear her, for the female spiders have a 
very poor opinion of their husbands and brothers, and 
are quite ready to kill and eat them if nothing better 
comes along ; so it is no wonder that poor Mr. Spider 
dreads his spouse, and lives in daily terror for his life. 

As might be expected the young spiders inherit these 
cannibal tastes, and if they are very hungry will begin to 
eat each other as soon as they are hatched ; and are quite 
indifferent as to whether it is a sister or a brother that they 
devour. The oddest part of the matter is that they are 
not exactly quarrelsome, but merely think that the princi- 
pal thing to consider is the satisfying of their hunger ; and 
while bearing their relations no ill-will at all, now and 
then find it necessary to eat a few of them. This is very 
different from the ants' household. Do you remember 
how fiercely they fought with their enemies, and yet 
treated their own friends and relatives with the greatest 
affection, and cared for them if they were hurt ? But the 
spiders are a very matter-of-fact race, that do not allow 
themselves to be carried away by their feelings ; and we 
might guess, from the precision with which they ar- 



214 Little People. 

range their webs, that they are of mathematical turn, and 
not given to emotion, or flights of fancy. But we must 
leave the house spider and return to the tunnel-shaped 
dwellings of those that live in the outer air. And these 
tunnels remind us of some far more wonderful spiders 
that are not found in the eastern and northern part of our 
country, because it is too cold for them here. They have 
improved on this plan of making thimble-shaped homes 
among the stones or grass-blades. Such dwellings are 
all very well for a little while, but they are too easily 
destroyed, and the great tarantulas have found a better 
way of living than in such temporary structures. 

Tarantulas live in warm countries, and the further 
south we go the larger and more poisonous we find them. 
Our small spiders only use their poison to kill their prey; 
but the large ones of the tropics will strike people as well 
as insects with their fangs, which sting severely, and some- 
times even cause the victim's death. So the tarantulas are 
to be feared, and we may be glad the huge creature is not 
a neighbor of ours. But if they are dangerous, and hor- 
ribly ugly too, with their eight great hairy legs, often long 
enough to cover a dinner-plate when they are spread out, 




THE WATER-SPIDER AT HOME. 



The Brownies. 217 

they certainly are interesting creatures. Those that live 
in the warmer parts of our own country are not nearly so 
large or deadly, and if you ever see one of their houses 
you will almost forget the owner of it was a little goblin 
you would not have cared to call upon when at home. 

This is the way the tarantula makes a home : In- 
stead of spinning an ordinary web, she first digs a tun- 
nel straight into the ground ; and when it is large 
enough lines it with a web so smooth and soft it feels 
like the finest silk. Here is a comfortable home, but vou 
may be sure that the spider has no intention of leaving 
it open for the public to walk in ; no, indeed, she must 
have a front door. So she makes a nice little round 
door out of earth and sticky web, lines the under side 
with silk, and fits it exactly to the hole, fastening it with 
the neatest little hinge, also made of web. Nothing 
can be prettier than one of these silk-lined tunnels with 
the closely-fitting door that opens and shuts so easily. 
The spider lives inside this comfortable dwelling, which 
is several inches deep ; and if any one tries to pull her 
trap-door open, she will hold it down from inside with 
all her might. What is more wonderful, she will some- 



218 Little People. 

times make a branch tunnel, opening into the first by 
another beautiful little door, and run in there if she does 
not succeed in keeping intruders out of her main hall. 

As the outside of the front door is rough, and possi- 
bly covered with turf, nobody would know when it is 
closed that the spiders house is anywhere near, as the 
ground looks the same all about ; but sometimes it may 
be found wide open. It is then that the spider vent- 
ures forth ; and opening her door, which she ties back 
by a few threads lest it fall shut again by its own 
weight, she spins a web all around the mouth of the 
hole and goes in again. She does not go in far, but 
just stands on the threshold waiting for prey, and 
catches the moths and night-beetles that blunder into 
the net, just as our own more familiar spiders in the 
grass spin their webs and dart at their prey from the 
mouths of the tunnels they have made. But before 
morning the tarantula clears away her web and the re- 
mains of her supper, that no trace of it shall linger in 
the neighborhood and betray her whereabouts, and 
going into her house again, shuts the door and enjoys 
the seclusion of her safe, silk-lined walls. 



The Brownies. 219 

So we see all spiders have different plots and strata- 
gems by which they catch their prey and at the same 
time keep themselves from harm ; and nearly all of 
these are connected in some way with their web-spin- 
ning. But there are a few that dispense with the web 
altogether, lying in wait for their victims like highway 
robbers ; and if you would know how this is done, listen 
to this tragical story of the wayside. 

One morning several little yellow butterflies were flut- 
tering merrily over the flowers near the road, and enjoy- 
ing the wild carrots and bitter yarrow as heartily as if they 
had been the roses and lilies of the finest garden. They 
were so full of life and fun that they never stayed long in 
one place, but danced and hovered from one flower to 
another, and lit up the shade of the overhanging trees 
with the gleam of their yellow wings. But one of them 
stayed a very long time on the white feathery umbrella 
of a wild carrot, so long that the other butterflies wonder- 
ed what the matter could be ; but being careless creatures 
they did not give much thought to it, but kept on with 
their fun. By and by, however, one of them made up his 
mind that something must be wrong, or his friend would 



220 Little People. 

never remain in one place for five whole minutes at a time. 
Had he found a new fountain of honey ? Had he met 
a strangely interesting companion ? Or had some un- 
known danger assailed him ? It was clearly the duty of 
friendship to find out, and the second butterfly flew toward 
the wild carrot where the first was sitting motionless. 

At first he could not see any more readily than before 
why the other should cling so persistently to the blossoms, 
which were not particularly sweet, and keep his head so 
deeply buried among them ; but the mystery was soon 
explained. The yellow wings would never flutter again. 
Death lurked in the white blossoms, and had seized the 
butterfly that sought for sweets. What should the living 
one see, holding firmly to his dead friend, but a small, 
snow-white spider, with a smooth, round body, half hidden 
among the clustering flowerets that make up the carrot 
blossom. Being of the same color, the flowers concealed 
the spider perfectly, and the poor little butterfly never 
dreamed of danger when he alighted for the last time, and 
found himself, as it were, in the very jaws of destruction. 

The other butterfly no doubt went back to his 
friends filled with horror at the tragedy, and at the de- 



The Brownies. 221 

ceptive wild carrot ; but I don't believe it lasted very 
long, for the butterflies have not very good memories. 
But the spider regarded the protecting flower in quite 
a different light, and I dare say thought it very 
friendly for giving her shelter ; for it was much easier 
to sit quietly among the flowerets waiting for a plump 
butterfly to come along, than to take the trouble of 
building a web and catching her prey in that. 

Have you ever seen dead butterflies standing, as if 
alive, on the white blossoms of these road-side herbs, or 
on the yellow golden-rod ? You may be quite sure 
that they all came to their death at the hands, or rather 
claws and fangs, of the smooth-bodied spiders ; only 
while white spiders hide in the white flowers, in the gol- 
den-rod you will find yellow ones. Each seems to 
know its own color, and how to match it in the tints of 
flowers ; and that it may be safe, each seeks a hiding 
place in a blossom of the same hue as itself 

We see now that spiders are very far from stupid, 
and it is not only hunger that sharpens their wits. 
When their nimble legs fail to take them out of danger, 
they will quickly think of some other plan for safety ; 



222 Little People. 

and sometimes they show us a trick that may well as- 
tonish us. What do you think a spider will do if you 
set it afloat on a stream, voyaging on a chip or boat ? 
It certainly will not resign itself to go down and drown 
in a whirlpool. Possibly it will swim ashore, for some 
spiders are very much at home in the water ; but if it is 
not one of this kind, it will try a very good plan by 
which it can escape a wetting altogether. From its 
spinnerets it sends long threads, that blow about in the 
wind ; and presently catching on some twig, leaf, or 
stone on the bank, form a little suspension bridge, on 
which the nimble spider can cross to the mainland with 
perfect ease. 

But if it is a very little one — for some spiders are 
very tiny indeed — it may spin a little bunch of light 
fluffy web, that spreads out and floats in the air all 
around it, and which at last will be caught up in some 
sudden breeze, and carried away like a bit of thistle- 
down, spider and all ; till it lands in a bush or weed, 
and is held fast among the twigs. Is not this an ingen- 
ious way of escaping from the difficulty ? 

It is not necessary for all spiders to resort to bridges 



The Brownies. 223 

and balloons to get across the water; for some of them, 
as I said, can swim as well as the minnows in the pool 
beneath, and these are called water-spiders. Of all the 
Little People none are more curious than this brownie, 
who has tried the most daring experiment in her way 
of living, and has been quite successful in keeping a 
snug, dry house entirely beneath the surface of the 
pool. How can she manage it ? We shall see. 

To find her we must pay still another visit to the 
home of the dragonflies and caddises, and the baby 
mosquitoes too, and seek for her among these swim* 
ming creatures. But it is not at the bottom of the 
stream, not paddling about with the grubs, and not 
sporting on the surface with the skaters and whirligigs, 
that we shall discover her. No, she has nothing to do 
with these creatures, for she is an air-breathing animal, 
like all other spiders, and did not choose the water as a 
residence because she preferred it to breath in. Then 
why does she make her home there at all? Just be- 
cause she is safer there. Her enemies will not be likely 
to plunge through the water after her, and she can live 
there in peace with her children. 



224 Little People. 

But if she cannot breathe in the water, how is it pos- 
sible for her to live there ? 

Well, let us see what she does. If we find her 
swimming through the water we shall notice how hairy 
her body is, and how her back shines, till it looks like 
the quicksilver ball in a themometer. This is really 
an air-bubble, entangled in the long hair of her back, 
and she is carrying it down to her house, under the lily- 
pads. This house is a little thimble-shaped affair of yel- 
lowish silk, fastened by long threads to the lily-stems ; 
and instead of opening at the top, like the tunnels of spi- 
ders that live in the air, is turned the other way, so that 
she enters from underneath. You may see her at home, 
in the upper part of the picture on page 216. When she 
goes in, she shakes the air-bubble from her back, and it 
rises into the little tent. You know that air and water 
cannot stay in the same place, so that if the air goes in, 
the water must come out ; and thus the dome is gradual- 
ly filled with air. There it floats like a bubble with water 
all around it, but none coming in ; and no doubt it would 
quickly rise to the surface, being so much lighter than 
the water itself, were it not anchored by the Lng thread. 



The Brownies. ■ 225 

The spider has to swim through the stream in her 

journeys to the mainland, of course ; but her thick furry 

hair protects her from the water as well as a rubber 

coat would do, as it keeps air always entangled in its 

meshes, and air, you know, is quite dry. So the spider 

lives in the world of water-sprites without being a 

water-sprite herself by any means, nor anything other 

than a little land-brownie ; who has no idea of following 

the fashions of the water-world if she can possibly help 

it. She has brought her own way of living into her 

watery home ; just as some people who have to live in 

a foreign country take all their home belongings with 

them, and fit up their houses to look as much like those 

in their native land as possible. We can fancy the 

water-sprite scorning the manners and customs of the 

curious little water-breathing people that come to peep 

at her snug little house and the strange air that fills it, 

and perhaps assuring them that she is no water-insect, 

but loves her native air, and breathes it too, in her own 

house. Then, if she concludes her remarks by inviting 

one of her visitors to " walk into her parlor," and there 

serves him up for her children's dinner or her own, we 
J 5 



226 Little People. 

can see that her neighbors would not be likely to med- 
dle with her very often. Perhaps, too, they grumble 
among themselves at the foreigner who has intruded 
upon their peaceful water-country, and refusing to con- 
form to its customs, devours all the natives she can find 
when she gets hungry. But they forget, as people 
generally do, that they are not very good examples of 
mercy and kindness themselves, and that the spider has 
as much right to entice stray insects into her floating 
home, as the dragon-grubs have to prowl about with 
masked faces, catching their helpless neighbors. 

Before we bid the brownies farewell we must notice 
the difference between them and all the other Little 
People. To begin with, the spiders have no such won- 
derful changes to pass through as the other insects have, 
but come out of the egg in their perfect form, and grow 
till they attain their full size. The other insects only 
grow during their larva state, and after they have be- 
come perfect insects never grow nor change again. 

Then the spiders' bodies are formed differently. In- 
stead of three divisions, the spiders have but two, their 
head and thorax being all in one piece. They have 



The Brownies. 227 

eight legs, instead of the six allotted to all true insects. 
They have no antennae, for the two projections resem- 
bling feelers are something very different ; namely, the 
poison fangs with which they strike their enemies, and 
which generally hang down over the mouth. They 
have no wings, and their fashion of spinning their webs 
from the end of their bodies is entirely a spider accom- 
plishment. For these and other reasons, some people 
say that spiders are not insects at all, but form an en- 
tirely separate class by themselves.* 

And here we must leave the Little People — the mis- 
chievous brownies, the water-sprites, the spangled 
fairies of the flowers, and the funny elves that dance 
and pipe in the moonlight. We have found out many 
strange things about their lives, but there are many 
more yet to discover, and I hope you like them well 
enough to go on and learn all you can about them. But 
in their own native haunts they will be found far more 
interesting, and pretty, and attractive, than on the pages 
of a book, so I would advise you all to go straight to 
fairyland, and get acquainted with its inhabitants. 

* Arachnidae. 



228 



Little People. 




Only when you get there I hope you will consider 
the feelings of the Little People, even if they do not 
always show as much mercy toward each other as big 
people should ; remembering that they are not to be 
played with or tortured, and particularly that 

" He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things, both great and small, 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 



.w£M\ 




